Ghana defender Rashid Sumaila was an unused substitute in Mamelodi Sundowns’ 2-0 win over Golden Arrows on Wednesday.

Christian Sheriff Asem Darkei, the man at the centre of the shipment and disappearance of 77 parcels of cocaine, opened his defence Wednesday. Darkei, also known as the Limping Man, told the Fast Track High Court in Accra, presided over by Mr Justice Mustapha Habib Logo, that he was a fisherman and did not deal in narcotics. Consequently, he denied the charges of conspiracy to import, importation and exportation of narcotic drugs. Led in evidence by his lawyer, Mr Isaac Aidoo, Darkei told the court that a friend asked him to purchase the MV Benjamin for him for fishing but that transaction did not materialise. He gave the friend’s name only as Charwartey and said the friend provided him (Darkei) with $150,000 to be used to purchase the MV Benjamin. He said the money was given to him by Charwartey in February 2006, adding that Charwatey took back the $150,000 after the purchase agreement failed.  He said the MV Benjamin, to his knowledge, imported fish and not narcotics. Cross-examination  After his evidence, a Principal State Attorney, Ms Yvonne Obuobisa Attakora, in her cross-examination, asked Darkei of his whereabouts in the course of the missing cocaine saga. Darkei said at that time he was in his village at Kasseh receiving treatment for asthma and later moved to a village between Togo and Ghana for further treatment. He said while in Togo, he shuttled between Togo and Nigeria for treatment. Asked whether he was not aware that he had been declared wanted by the police in Ghana, he responded in the affirmative and said he was so ill at the time that his focus was on how to treat himself. Darkei said he owned two vessels that were used for fishing and that his friend intended to buy the MV Benjamin for the importation of fish. He mentioned the name of his company as Atiko Fisheries, while the two vessels were the MV Check One and the MV Alabanya. Asked by Ms Attakora the date on which he travelled, he told the court that he travelled to his village on April 26, 2006.  Asked what he had used a loan of GH¢25,000 he secured from the UT Bank for, Darkei said it was used to purchase parts to replace damaged ones in his ship.  However, the State Attorney suggested to him that on the loan form, he had stated that he was going to use the facility to buy marine fuel. Darkei said he finished paying for the loan on May 4, 2006. Darkei is alleged to have played a major role in the shipment of 2,310 kilogrammes of cocaine, with a face value of $138.6 million, into the country in April 2006.  The prosecution closed its case on April 23, 2013.   Arrest Darkei was arrested by BNI officials at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital on February 2, 2012 upon a tip-off, after he had been pursued for years by the security agencies. He has, however, pleaded not guilty to three counts of conspiracy, importation and exportation of narcotic drugs. Facts of the case It is the case of the prosecution that around midnight on April 26, 2006, the MV Benjamin, reportedly carrying about 77 parcels of cocaine, with each parcel weighing 30 kilogrammes, docked at Kpone/Tema and discharged the parcels. The parcels were offloaded into a waiting vehicle which carried them away. According to the prosecution, in the course of investigations, Darkei’s name featured prominently as the importer and/or owner of the drug. He was said to be the person who had chartered the vessel at a cost of $150,000 to tow another vessel from Guinea to Ghana and, subsequently, carted the alleged 77 parcels. The disappearance of the cocaine led to the constitution of the Justice Georgina Wood Committee and the subsequent trial of persons alleged to have played various roles in the importation. Hearing continues on February 10, 2014. Writer’s Email: [email protected]

Coach Mohammed Polo admits Hearts of Oak is in crisis but will not be cowed into resigning following their humiliating 3-0 defeat to Wa All Stars on Wednesday.

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Ten houses were Wednesday demolished at Agya Herbal, a neighbourhood of Ofankor in Accra, on the orders of an Accra high court. The intervention of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Trobu, Mr Moses Anim, and the Municipal Chief Executive of the Ga Central Municipality, Mr Aristo Aryee, saved 20 other houses from demolition. The exercise, which was carried out by the Nii Nikoi Olai We, with the backing of an Accra high court, started at around 6 a.m., during which parts of a number of houses were pulled down. However, the intervention of the two political heads calmed the situation and owners of the targeted properties were given a two-week relief period to work out an agreement with the landowners. The lands on which the buildings were situated had been the subject of a protracted litigation between the Nikoi Olai family and one Emmanuel Fradey and others. Demolition site When the Daily Graphic team got to the site, quite a sizeable crowd had gathered there, some of them bemoaning their fate while others complained bitterly about the rate of demolitions in the country. More than 50 police officers from the Regional SWAT team were on hand to provide security for the court bailiffs and also to maintain law and order. While most of the houses in the hilly community, close to the Rev. John Teye Memorial School, were yet to be completed, others were occupied by caretakers, who watched on helplessly. Most of the houses earmarked for demolition had the notice, “Remove Nikoi Olai Family” posted on them, together with a telephone number. The houses marked for demolition, according to some sources, had been built on parcels of land that the family had not sold to the encroachers. “Some of us bought the land from the Nikoi Olai We in 2000, but another group came claiming ownership of the land around 2009 and threatened demolition. We had to pay again to them. Those of us who were lucky to have documents from the Nikoi Olai people are those whose property had been spared the demolition,” one source said. Landowners  Speaking to the Daily Graphic, Asafoatse Kotey Kortey, a member of the Nikoi Olai family, said after years of litigation that ended in 2012, the family had given enough notices to the affected property owners to no avail. “It is a legitimate demolition backed by the courts and law enforcement body. That means it is legitimate and we are not flouting the law.” He said the plea from the MP notwithstanding, the family would sit down and take a collective action on what to do. “Let tomorrow come, we’ll decide what to do. We are demolishing the houses of all those who don’t have documents from us,” he added. Member of Parliament Mr Anim said when he heard about the demolition, he called the DCE to find out if it was an order from the assembly and he said no. “So we had to rush here.” The MP said after the police had shown him the necessary documents, he pleaded with the family heads while the MCE also did same.   He said the way forward would be to meet the residents and let them know the truth and the facts, so that they could meet with the family and have the issues sorted out. Writer's email:[email protected]

The day is coming, when members of the public would be able to buy units from vendors for their electricity meters as they currently do for their mobile phones. Consumers of electricity would also be able to purchase electricity online if they are far away from home, or buy from handheld devices operated by accredited agents at public places. Not only that, electricity consumers would also be able to recharge their power at home or establishment through an SMS Server, by way of text messages from their phones wherever there is a telecommunication service. Power could also be bought without a card, provided a consumer is able to mention accurately his unique meter number and would be able to use his or her name if there are no similar ones in the system that would make it difficult to get the right meter on which to load credit. Disclosing this yesterday at a meeting with selected media in Accra, Mr Duke Nelson, Head, IT and Projects, Ghana Electrometer Company, said all these would become possible after the successful completion of a pre-pilot project involving a newly introduced electricity prepaid meter known as the SMART-G Prepayment System. Pre-pilot project The pre-pilot project currently ongoing at Danyame, a suburb in Kumasi, in partnership with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), began in October 4, 2013 and is expected to move to the actual pilot stage in April, this year. Explaining that the ‘G’ in SMART-G stood for green, Mr Nelson said the new prepaid meter was unique, because it did not only come in two components – outdoor and indoor units – but had other features that made its use convenient to the user and very beneficial to the service provider. According to him, the indoor or Customer Interface Unit (CIU) allows consumers to track their consumption, while simultaneously reducing the risk of tampering with the meter and can be used with dry cell batteries when there is no power.  “Consumers are provided with flexible and secure means of transferring credit to their meters, through the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) communication technology, as well as the user friendly keypad interface,” he added.  He said the SMART-G metering system could be used for single phase, three phase and transformers, and operated using a database server, SMS server, GPRS server, Fire Wall, which is the actual operating system, and vending system, among others. Guarantee against theft Another unique feature of the meter, Mr Nelson said, was its anti-tampering facility which informed the utility provider of an open cover, open terminal, high magnetic fields, reverse current and fault energy.  It also has an accuracy class of one. He cautioned that as distribution transformers from the utility provider were also going to have meters attached, it was going to be difficult to bypass the household and institutional meters to illegally tap electricity, as had been done in the past. Answering a question on proper billing of customers, Mr Nelson said the new metering system automatically generated receipts when power was bought but urged customers to always check their receipts. “In actual fact the customer would have been given the net, having had some deductions made such as an outstanding bill,” he said. Describing the new meter as a “living meter”, Mr Obed Solomon, Operations and Internal Relations Manager, Ghana Electrometer Company, said the company currently operated electronic cash meters in the Volta, Eastern, Western, Central and Greater Accra regions. He said the company, which is the only one in Ghana manufacturing meters, had its products in use at Tema, Adenta and Dodowa, among other places  in the Greater Accra Region, with none of them being on electricity poles. Writer’s email: [email protected]

For the first time in five years, the chiefs and people of Buipe in the Northern Region have celebrated their annual Damba festival in unity and fanfare. Damba, the most prominent festival among Gonjas, is celebrated to mark the birth of the founder of Islam and it is celebrated among many ethnic groups in northern Ghana in different forms. Despite its traditional and religious importance to the people of Buipe, Damba could not be celebrated for the past five years due to the acrimonious chieftaincy dispute that characterised the area. With the dispute now resolved, the chiefs and elders of the area came together to celebrate the festival in unity and to demonstrate to the world that they had settled their differences and were now united to chart a new path of development for themselves and the whole country. Clad in royal regalia and paraphernalia, the Paramount Chief of the Buipe Traditional Area, Buipe Wura Jinapor II, sat in state in a grand durbar and was assisted by his sub- chiefs and aides — some of whom were his opponents in the chieftaincy dispute,— to mark the occasion. In attendance were people of different ethnic and professional backgrounds including the Wangara Chief, who came from Kintampo with his elders; tourists and Fulanis. In a speech read on behalf of the Buipe Wura, his spokesperson, Dr Ahmed Jinapor, said the chiefs, queens, elders and people of the Buipe Traditional Area carefully settled on   “Peace and Reconciliation for Sustainable Development”,  for this year’s Damba  for good reasons. He described the occasion as a joyous one for him as it marked the first anniversary of a Damba during his reign where all the chiefs, stakeholders and people of Buipe were behind him and actively participated in the celebration of the festival. He said there was genuine peace, reconciliation and togetherness among all the people of Buipe and “I want to use this opportunity to reiterate my irrevocable and unflinching commitment to sustain the peace that exists in Buipe and to ask all and sundry to join me in this noble endeavour”. The Buipe Wura thanked President John Mahama and  Yagbonwura  Borenase for their contribution to the restoration of peace and tranquillity in Buipe. The Deputy Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini, thanked the people of Buipe for their sense of tolerance and maturity which had enabled them to peacefully resolve the chieftaincy dispute that characterised the area some time ago. He said their Dagomba counterparts also exhibited the same spirit of reconciliation and togetherness for the first time in many years during this year’s Damba festival by coming together to mark the occasion. He expressed delight that the decision of many traditional areas in the Northern Region to resolve their chieftaincy problems and come together would chart a new path for the rapid development of the region. The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mr Bilijo Nayong, asked the people of Buipe to take advantage of its strategic location and attract investors to come and develop the huge aquaculture potential in the area. Such a move, he noted, would create a lot of employment opportunities for the youth and also create wealth for many people in the area.

The Ghana Medical Association has given the National Labour Commission (NLC) a one-month ultimatum to enforce its ruling regarding the payment of conversion difference to members of the association in the public sector. It said failure to enforce the ruling would compel the GMA to embark on a series of measures it had put in place, including a possible industrial action, effective March 3, 2014 “to press home our demands, since the state institutions are clearly failing or working against our common good per their code”. This was contained in a February 3, 2014 letter signed by Dr Justice Yankson, Assistant General Secretary of the association, and addressed to the chairman of the NLC. It said the association was disappointed with the seeming lack of commitment on the part of the NLC to enforce its ruling in the matter of the GMA verses the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) regarding the payment of conversion difference to its members. “The GMA is highly disappointed at the conduct of both the NLC and the FWSC that had led to the striking out of the NLC’s motion on the subject matter for want of prosecution by an Accra high court on January 31, 2014,” it said. It said the GMA was of the opinion that the NLC and the FWSC “have evinced a clear intention through their acts of commission and omission to ensure that members of the GMA are denied their rights and/or the NLC has deliberately failed to ensure enforcement of its own ruling”. That, it explained, was because for almost nine months, a motion of enforcement of the said ruling was not moved by the NLC culminating in same dismissed by the high court at the instance of the FWSC when on January 31,2014, the NLC failed to appear in court to move the motion. According to the GMA, that situation was grossly “unfair/unacceptable to the GMA, especially when we are reliably informed that the legal teams of NLC and FWSC had earlier agreed to go to court on a later date instead of on January 31, 2014, at the request of the FWSC”. It said it was also not in tune with the letter and spirit of the Labour Act. “The GMA believes this conduct by both NLC and FWSC is a calculated attempt to frustrate and deny its members their rights by the two state institutions under the pretext of working through the courts,” it said. It said the GMA would not allow that to happen and, therefore, urged the NLC to, as a matter of urgency, ensure that the situation was corrected and the case relisted for hearing.