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The Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has been cited for contempt of court for his handling of a restraining order document issued by a court in Accra.
The MP was captured in a viral video rejecting the document from the secretary to the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral of Ghana, Rev Victor Kusi Boateng, who is also known as Kwabena Adu Gyamfi.
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa was forced to kick out the document after the bailiff tried to force the document into his car on the compound of Metro TV after the Good Morning Ghana show last Friday.
The motion for contempt, which was filed by Rev Kusi Boateng, indicated that the reasons Ablakwa gave for rejecting the document were not tangible.
According to the court document sighted by GhanaWeb, the MP said that he could not be served the document because he was on his way to Parliament but the House was on recess as at the time the order was being served.
“… when the Bailiff of this Honourable Court reminded the Respondent that Parliament was on recess, the Respondent then claimed that he was on his way to a meeting of one of the committees of Parliament, an allegation which has since turned out to be a falsehood told by the Respondent merely to evade service of the court processes on him
“I am informed by my Counsel and verily believe same to be true that the immunities available to members of Parliament from being served personally with court processes can only be invoked when that member of Parliament is either on his way to or way from Parliamentary proceedings or activities; an immunity which the Respondent could not have invoked on the 3 of February 2023 because the Parliament of Ghana was on recess at that time.
“… dissatisfied with the excuses that the Respondent was giving to evade service of Exhibits VKB) and VKB2, the Court Officer proceeded to discharge his statutory duty of serving court processes personally on the Respondent by leaving the processes as close as possible to the Respondent,” parts of the court document read.
It added that the MP also disrespected the court when he shared copies of the court order on social media.
The document, which was titled: “Motion on Notice to Commit the Respondent for Contempt of Court”, was seeking to get the MP imprisoned for contempt.
“I am informed by my Counsel and verily believe same to be true that this Honourable Court has the power to commit the Respondent to prison for his conduct to protect the whole administration of justice and serve as a deterrent to other persons,” it read.
About restraining order against Ablakwa
The secretary to the board of Trustees of the National Cathedral of Ghana, Rev Victor Kusi Boateng, who is also known as Kwabena Adu Gyamfi, has secured an order of interim injunction against the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
The order restrains Okudzeto Ablakwa from publicly sharing any document belonging to Kwabena Adu Gyamfi for the next 10 days.
The MP who disclosed this in a tweet shared on Friday, February 3, 2023, said that he was served the order after his appearance on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana programme on the same day.
“One Kwabena Adu Gyamfi also claiming to have an alias as Victor Kusi Boateng has secured a 10-day restraining order seeking to stop me from further publications on the Conflict of Interest & Double Identity Scandal,” parts of the MP’s tweet read.
The MP shared a picture of the order he was served which read: “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the 1″ Respondent, SAMUEL OKUDZETO ABLAKWA is restrained from making further public disclosures of private documents, correspondence, communication and property belonging to the Applicant (Adu Gyamfi).”
“IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this interim order will lapse after Ten (10) days,” it added.
Background
The latest corruption exposé on the National Cathedral by the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, suggested impropriety on the part of the secretary to the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral of Ghana, Rev. Victor Kusi Boateng.
On January 16, 2023, the MP made some allegations against Rev. Kusi Boateng, who is the secretary to the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral of Ghana.
In an earlier revelation about the National Cathedral, Okudzeto Ablakwa said a whopping GH¢2.6 million was dished out to a company named JNS Talent Centre Limited.
Further investigations into the alleged payment led to the discovery of one Kwabena Adu Gyamfi as a director of JNS Talent Centre.
Having confirmed the identities of two out of three directors of the centre, Ablakwa dug deeper in a bid to discover the identity of the third director, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi.
According to his findings, citing a number of statutory documents, Kwabena Adu Gyamfi was the same as Reverend Kusi Boateng, who has allegedly been operating under the pseudonym Kwabena Adu Gyamfi.
