The issues surrounding the payments of gratuities, erections of emoluments and ex gratia, are up once again for a national debate on whether such things do exist in our 1992 constitution which had been enshrined with how state officials or public servants who dedicated and devoted themselves to the cause of serving the country towards her developmental agenda.
Togbe Afede, a former chairman of the council of state, rejected a certain unprecedented amount of money given him by the state but being a just and a noble religious and a traditional king, he turned down the offer outrightly: citing personal and national interest reasons.
According to him, the country needs at the moment urgently so as to undertake some developmental activities in the country to help alleviate the economic downturn on the lives of the Ghanaian citizens in the country and therefore, such an amount offered him should be used for something else and rather than paying it to him as an ex gratia which he does not need for anything as an individual.
He stated that it was in his best interest that he cautiously served the nation and paid his civil responsibility dues as required by law and not to turn the other way around and amass wealth at the expense of the vulnerable individuals in the country who are struggling to make ends meet in a day.
Due to the righteous decision taken by the illustrious son of the Volta region in his denial of the so called ex gratia paid him, some people in the governing New Patriotic Party are not taking kindly to his ultimate rejection of the money and as a result, one of them has taken to the media landscape to malign and dent the hard earned reputation of the traditional ruler of countless years.
Some legal luminaries in the country have state clearly that such erroneous decisions embarked upon by the presidency in paying unaccounted ex gratia or gratuities, such dangerous undertakings are not stipulated in the constitution and thus it is an utter blatantly wrong thought for the president and his appointees to engage in their clandestine and devised means of siphoning and looting the treasuries of the country thereby rendering the coffers empty and dry without restoration after taking his lexicon decisions.
But Paul Adom Otchere, someone who called himself a lawyer of over decades practice, has lambasted and vilified the king of the Asogli State for turning down the financial rewards from the president describing the king as reaping from where he did not sow.
According to Paul Adom Otchere, who is also the host of Good Evening Ghana, a current affairs programme on Entertainment Television, Metro Tv, intentionally took the chief to the cleaners stripping his privacy naked without substantiating his wild and fallacious claims against the personality of Togbe Afede due to his rejection of that so called ex gratia.
Paul stated on Metro Tv during his show that what would be the moral rectitude embedded in the decision of Togbe Afede in his objection to the ex gratia payments while he The Agbogbomefia of the Asogli State, previously took huge sum of money from the coffers of the country which does not belong to him because he did not do any significant or yuomant job in serving the country before he received such cash prizes in the past but rather for him to let the world ridicule the president, he blatantly rejected an ex gratia paid him by the President.
Paul Adom Otchere used his programme and dedicated his whole time allotted him for the show, chastised and berated such a respected king for his traditional subordinates but he had been squarely responded to in an equal meaning.
The Asogli State has described his salvoes on the life of the King as dangerous lies and he himself being a terrible liar whose journalism only seeks to be licking political boot for his parochial and insatiable appetite.
Paul, a friend of many in the media but an enemy to himself, has been rounded up by some of his own senior and junior colleagues in the media as an unseasoned braggart and unwise chameleon that does not seem to adapt to any colour in its life.
Source: https://ghbuzznews.com/
