Kwesi Pratt Jnr., Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, has said that elements within the New Patriotic Party who he said sought to discredit the Mills administration and create public disaffection for the government by jumping at the Amina Mohammed “armed robbery and mass rape” story, did a shoddy job of analyzing the issues involved dispassionately.
Had they done a good job of it, he said, they would not have rushed to town needlessly in their desire to create as much political mischief as they could and then proceed to create a sense of insecurity in the country.
Kwesi Pratt who was speaking on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji programme on Saturday, said the unfortunate development has become a contest between the ruling National Democratic Congress and the opposition New Patriotic Party because when the story broke, elements within the NPP saw it as another opportunity to bash the government and make it unpopular.
“Indeed it was a very high level of opportunism, because if they had sat back and examined the issues very clearly, they would have known that biologically, in such situations of extreme stress, it would not have been possible for the driver to sleep with three out of five women.
Biologically it would have been totally impossible…”, stressing that even that should have served substantial doubt about the story and prevented the opportunism to achieve political advantage.
But while he said those mischief-seekers misfired, other persons within the ruling NDC party also misfired badly throwing up a ‘cock-and-bull story’ of NPP chairman, Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, being the mastermind of the Amina story without providing a shred of evidence.
“So far, not a shred of evidence has been provided linking Jake Obetsebi Lamptey to this story, and yet it goes on and on and on… The conspiracy theory, I think is completely baseless because in my analysis the conclusion that I have come to is that yes, Amina told a story which was not true.
Political opportunists in the NPP decide to latch unto it to create as much mischief as they could, but they were not the originators of the plot and that is my own conclusion on this matter.”
The nation has been gnawed by the story since it broke last week Adom FM and subsequently Joy FM, with Amina claiming that while on a journey to northern Ghana, armed robbers stopped their bus, robbed passengers and forced males on the bus to sleep with females.
But According to ‘Massa’ Kwesi, there is a possibility that Amina Mohammed, the lady at the center of the controversial story, may not have fabricated her story but could be suffering from a health condition that makes her believe that her story is the truth.
According to him, a situation such as schizophrenia (a serious mental illness in which someone cannot understand what is real and what is imaginary) could delude Amina into believing that her narration was the real situation when indeed no such events have occurred.
“My point of view is that putting all things together, it is possible that there is no fabrication whatsoever. And I’ve taken the trouble to do some serious studies within the last week or so, on this matter. You’ll find that there are some health conditions under which a person may actually believe that he or she is telling the truth about an incident and indeed all that he or she says would not be real… For example persons who suffer from schizophrenia firmly believe things that are not true and yet they will say it with vehemence and insist that what they are saying is the truth.”
He said fortunately, the company which owns the bus on which Amina claimed to have travelled, operates a near-foolproof system of documenting travelers data, including their telephone numbers, and so far no one else has corroborated her story, including Amina’s own mother, said to have been on the bus.
Kwesi Pratt described as ‘pure mischief’ any claim that parts of Amina’s story are true and therefore her entire story is credible, saying it could be true that Amina travelled on the bus, as well as a gunshot may have damaged the windscreen of the bus, however her claims that the incident happened in Kintampo; that the driver was given five women out of which he slept with three and thereafter collapsed, as well as her claim that the robbers boarded the bus to steal all personal belongings of the travelers, all collapse in the face of evidence adduced by other travelers on the same bus.
“Everybody on the bus who has been interviewed, including the driver, said that they were travelling towards Bolga, and that somewhere at Kubease or around Kubease near Ejisu, they saw a barrier; the driver suspected that the barrier was an illegal barrier so he did not stop, he drove through the barrier; there was a gun report and that the windscreen of the vehicle was damaged. The driver did not stop, drove all the way to Ejisu and made a report to the police. This is the storyline. What is Amina’s story? Amina’s story is that they were going to Bolga, somewhere near Kintampo or at Kintampo, armed robbers stopped the vehicle, they came unto the vehicle, robbed all the passengers and forced the passengers to sleep with each other. And more gory details are given… These two stories are not the same, and that she managed to prevent a sexual attack on her only because she was in her [menses]… and that because she was in her menses and she was considered bad luck for the robbers, the mother was also spared. These are the two stories. These the two stories cannot be the same. They cannot have the same import…”
“…so these claims that some aspects of the story are true and therefore there is some credence to the story, is a bit strange. And indeed I do not expect reasonable persons acting logically to make this kind of argument. Clearly there is something wrong with the Amina story, clearly.”
According to Kwesi Pratt, a careful pursuit of the sequence of events show that the police did not err in denying initially that the entire attempted robbery and mass rape story was untrue because they logically pursued Amina’s claims from the Northern and Brong Ahafo regions where any such incident in the area would naturally be reported but as it turned out, no such incident had occurred there. |
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