The politics of how Chief Imam and others tried to convince Gen. Mosquito to accept Kufuor’s appointee

It would not be the first time he has spoken about how he came to be known as General Mosquito, but in his most recent narration of the events that led to it, the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) made some interesting revelations.

Speaking in an interview on Otec FM’s Daw Berem show, General Mosquito said the nickname came about after he stood his grounds and fought against the nomination and approval of an appointee for the Ministry of Forestry by President John Agyekum Kufuor in the early 2000s.

Without mentioning the name of this person because he is deceased, Johnson Asiedu Nketia explained that having been privy to the history of this appointee, a person he described as a thief and dishonest person, he made it a personal duty not to allow him to go through the nomination process.

He added that his rejection of this nomination was so unwavering that he began to get all sorts of theories bandied around him, purporting to be his reasons for rejecting the nominee.

“What I went through was not easy. They went to mobilize Bono Ahafo students in the universities and they organized press conferences to the extent that there was a point where they said it was because I was from Bono and the nominee was from Ahafo that was why I was working against him,” he said.

Asiedu Nketia added that he knew that, should he agree, this man could use his position as minister to pay back the very people who had once punished him or sacked him for a thing or two.

“After all this, I said that should this man, who was to become main minister over the same sector in which the very people who had once sacked him, meaning he would become their boss, you can imagine what he would do to them there,” he said.

He continued that this went on so much that even the Chief Imam of Ghana was also used as a way of getting him to rescind his decision to reject the nomination of the man.

“I held my grounds to the point where the Bono Ahafo Regional House of Chiefs sent a delegation to come and plead with me. I told them this man was not the only person in the region. I told them as for this person, he was a thief, and so they should go and tell President Kufuor that if he means well for us, he should look for a finer nominee from the region so that when he goes for cabinet meetings, he can confidently lobby for things.

“Later, they went for the Chief Imam and a lot of other people to come and plead with me. There was also a man that I stayed with when I travelled to the United States, and who would take me to the market to get me suits that I would wear to parliament, who was also used. He came down to Ghana to plead with me, but I told him that I am yet to use all the dresses he got me, so if he doesn’t mind, I can return them because, as for this, I would never agree for a thief to become a minister in Ghana.

“There was even a Lebanese timber contractor who drove a brand-new car to my house, telling me that should I agree, he would hand over the keys to me. I sent him packing quickly. In the long run, the report that was presented to parliament indicated that only Asiedu Nketia stood against this man’s nomination,” he said.