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We have reported in past editions that the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), their flagbearer, Nana Akufo Addo and the party’s power-thirsty strategists, have devised crude methods against President Mahama, members of his family and whoever they think stands between them and the annexation of the Flag Staff House on January 7th 2017.

The aL-haJJ has reported that the NPP intended using all manner of unorthodox media and political strategy to paint the President, members of his government and family black in order to put their beleaguered presidential candidate at an advantageous position to win the presidency in the December 7th general elections.

Part of the strategy is to effectively use socials media to destroy the image of the President so that “the adage that says if you want to kill a snake, destroy its head,” will work for them in next year’s elections.

Other cyber warriors of the NPP were deployed to monitor the President’s socials media activities and spy on him and his family so that they can get otherwise guarded information to embarrass the President.

Perhaps one of the clearest manifestations of these crude strategy by the NPP as we inch towards the 2016 elections is the planting of concocted story over the weekend, presumably by the social media operatives of the NPP on alleged exchanges between the President and his Vice, Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah Arthur at a cabinet meeting.

The cooked story, which was callously attributed to The aL-haJJ, has all the traits of a desperate party desirous of using all means possible to win political power.

The aL-haJJ has issued a disclaimer on the false story and many well-wishers and sympathizers of the newspaper and Ghanaians in general have condemned the story and the cowards who authored it.

According to the false story attributed to the newspaper “The Al Hajj can report that there were hot exchanges between President John Mahama and Vice President Amissah Arthur at an emergency cabinet meeting before President Mahama embarked for Ethiopia for the African Union Conference, on the state of the Economy and the poor performance of some ministers.”

“The relationship between the President and his vice can best be described as strained despite efforts by senior NDC figures to broker a truce. Relations are said to be so bad that the President does not want to be seen at any function with the Vice and has insisted for their schedules to be separate as much as possible.

“According to sources the Vice President told the President blatantly that he has surrounded himself with sycophants and apologists who did not have a clue and were not serious about tackling the current problems in the economy.

“In a rare display of fire not normally seen from a quiet man, he called for some ministers to be sacked including Seth Terkper the Finance Minister, Emmanuel Buah the energy minister for his handling of the energy crisis and Mr Mark Woyongo whose sycophancy he said had reach abnormal levels!

“Reports say the President got angry and banged his fist on the table shouting” You don’t tell me what to do. You think if I had my way you will be my Vice President? What do you do apart from sleeping in your office and not doing anything unless you are asked to do something? Get lost!!!

“The Vice President was said to have angrily got up to approach the President and had to be restrained by Haruna Idrissu and Fiifi Kwetey the Minister for Agriculture, who was said to have spoken to the President in an unknown dialect to keep calm.

In a quick disclaimer on facebaook authored and signed by the news editor of the paper, Mr. Amos Blessing Amorse, and dated 1st February, 2015, this newspaper denied ever publishing that false publication cruelly attributed to it by what one can comfortably describe as ‘NPP social media terrorists’.

“The aL-hAJJ’s attention has been drawn to a malicious and spurious story trending on social media with the above title and sourced to our outfit. We would like to state emphatically and without any shred of equivocation that The aL-hAJJ has no knowledge of the said story.
“We find the said story as a spirited ploy by some unscrupulous and faceless elements in society to draw our hard won reputation and credibility into the mud and sow a seed of discord between us and the presidency.
“For the facts, the paper comes out only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, therefore, the said publication, which never featured in our last publication of Thursday, January 29, 2015 but is being widely circulated and credited to us, couldn’t have come from our outfit.

“It is true that we normally have our stories on our “official facebook” wall the morning after every publication, but the scandalous story started trending on social media two or three days after our last publication.

“Our own investigations have proved that the perpetrator(s) of this cruel and mischievous agenda wrote the malicious story using the name of one of our reporters and used it for their iniquitous agenda which was obviously intended to create false impression that there is strain in relationship between President Mahama and his hardworking Vice President.

“The aL-hAJJ will be the last media outlet to publish such specious story without recourse to the ethics of journalism. We urge our avid readers and the general public to ignore the said story and treat it with the needed contempt it deserved.

“Meanwhile, we have referred the matter to the security agencies for further investigations.

The managing editor of The aL-hAJJ, Alhaji Bature Iddrisu, on his part earlier wrote on his facebook wall: Folks, the story making headlines on fb titled PREZ MAHAMA CLASHED WITH VEEP AMISSAH ARTHUR and sourced from The Al-hajj Newspaper is false and untrue. The AL-HAJJ hasn't done such a story. Kindly ignore it. Alhaji Bature Iddrisu, managing editor. Thanx."

Last September, The aL-haJJ carried a story with a banner headline:
“MAHAMA SPIED ON”

President’s phone calls, internet and ‘safe houses’ targeted”
According to the story, “the intelligence gathering team of The aL-hAJJ can reveal that sabotage, espionage and electronic surveillance including wiretaps and eavesdropping against certain institutions and individuals including President Mahama will be actively deployed by certain elements within the opposition to get the upper-hand at the polls.”

“Months of clandestine investigations backed by testimonies of some secret agents within and outside this country have revealed an elaborate strategy by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to electronically monitor President Mahama including hacking into his domestic and international calls and internet activities such as facebook, e-mails, twitter, whatsapp and what have you.

“The main objectives of these illegal communications surveillance according to information available to The aL-hAJJ is to know what the President and people in his inner circle are about at any time in order to help fashion out a strategy that would help their campaign to defeat the President and his NDC party at the polls in the December 2016 elections.

“According to the sources, wealthy and influential members of the NPP including some of those suspected of dealing in illicit drug business both in Ghana and abroad have gone to the extent of recruiting moles within the inner circle of the President and the NDC in order to feed them with the necessary information on how to outwit the NDC at the polls.

“The source pointed out that “to them the human intelligence aspect is the most important aspect of espionage and so they have mobilized huge amount of money to fund that aspect of ‘operations’ in order to find ways of embarrassing the President and his government.” “They intend infiltrating all the major safe houses the President visits in this country, foremost among them are the Peduasi Lodge and some three or four other safe houses around Cantonments and Airport Residential areas in Accra.

In fact his own office at the Flag Staff House is not safe either as some agents within that seat of government have been recruited to spy on the President and his inner circle. A lot of the agents or spies are cloaked as civil servants and security officers at the Flag Staff House but are really working effectively for the opposition. What is not clear is whether some key members of President Mahama’s administration are actively taking part in the plot.

“Some members of the President entourage are said to be compromised to place secret cameras and recorders in and around those safe houses that the President visits with the intention of recording all the activities of the President, including his flirtations or romance with members of the opposite sex.

“In fact they are even targeting some of the hotels he domiciles when he travels outside the country and locally the regional residencies across the country have also been infiltrated and huge amounts of monies were said to have been paid to some of the recruited agents there.. “They are bent on disgracing and humiliating this President before the 2016 elections. They were said to have secured the most modern electronic monitoring gadgets and the most sensitive secret recorders you can find anywhere in the world.

“Should they succeed in getting any evidence of the President in an uncompromising way, they are likely to use it as a tool of blackmail and political propaganda in the run up to the elections. “Yes, the aim is to use every means available to them to paint the President black in order to get advantage over him even before the polls,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

“One of the agents who spoke to The aL-hAJJ’s monitoring team said “they also are eager to find out how in their words proceeds of corrupt activities or simply corrupt or looted monies are concealed within and outside the country.” They suspected that huge amount of monies are stashed in some of the President’s safe houses and so their intension is to place the secret cameras to unearth all those concealments in order to use the evidence to embarrass the President.

“However, a source close to President Mahama dismissed this claims and said the President is neither corrupt nor involved in any attempts at concealing any proceeds of any corrupt activity. “The President is as clean as anything you can think about and so any attempt at unraveling anything fishy would be an exercise in futility.

“Those who think they can employ cyber terrorism to win the 2016 should have a re-think because the President has nothing to hide to the people of Ghana and so they would be better off if they can find something better to do with their time. “The people of Ghana would hopefully renew his mandate despite the current challenges the national economy is facing. “As we have been saying, the challenges we face now are temporary and we will surmount them in the coming days for people to get a relief,” the source said.

“A noisy member of the NPP and now running an international political institution and an assign of their 2012 flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, who also recently rounded up his activities in the country and relocated to one of the European countries is said to be part of this stratagem. The aL-hAJJ is still investigating him and will put his name and his modus operandi out once our investigations is completed.

“He was said to have used his links across the globe to mobilize an army of retired secret agents of some of the most powerful countries on the surface of earth. These include the United States, Israel, the UK and South Africa.

These retired secret service agents, who are said to be working with some of the private security contractors in the aforesaid countries have been mobilized into five main cells with responsibility in various continents. The cell in the United States takes charge of all the countries in the North and South America, the UK cell manages the whole of Europe including Russia, the one in South Africa takes care of the whole of Africa and that of Israel takes charge of Asia and the Middle East. The Ghanaian cell, which is the biggest, receives whatever intelligence information that is being gathered by these aforesaid cells, processed them as political propaganda to be used against the President and his party the NDC in the run up to the 2016 elections.

“Apart from some few Ghanaians, almost all the Staff of these cells are former members of the intelligence services of the countries mentioned above, but now working in the private sector. “They are carefully drawn from the Israeli Mossad, the South African Secret Service (SASS), the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) usually called MI6 and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. Those in Ghana were drawn from ex members of the Ghana’s National Security popularly called the Blue Gate. They were said to have served under President Kufuor but now very loyal to Nana Akufo-Addo.

“The NPP are eager to unseat President Mahama in 2016 and they think all modern strategies should be adopted to achieve their objectives including illegal electronic surveillance and cyber-terrorism. “They are very much aware of the exploits of Mr Raymond Archer in the run up to the 2008 elections where the NPP and their security set up were infiltrated leaving them naked and vulnerable”, the source revealed.

“Mr Archer, through the use of modern intelligence gathering techniques was able to unearth numerous dirty tactics the NPP was intending to use to win the 2008 election. These include dumping some dead bodies in Volta Region to create security crisis and anarchy paving the way for them to illegally retain power. Thus, according to sources familiar with the NPP’s current strategy, they intend to do more than ten times what Mr. Archer had done in 2008 in order to ensure victory for their beleaguered flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo. They were said to have raised huge amount of money from some of their wealthy supporters both within and outside the country for these clandestine activities.

“The aL-hAJJ’s sources were unable to confirm if the newly Research Committee for the Akufo Addo/NPP campaign mostly, composed of the flag bearer’s loyalists is part of the Ghana cell. Fourteen eminent members of the NPP have been named to a newly established research committee among them include, Akufo Addo’s strategic henchman, Victor Newman, Rashid Bawa, Dr. Twumasi and David Annan. Others include Lawyer O.B Amoah, Mad. Sharika Issahaque, Catherine Afeku, Dr Nana Afriyie Ayew and Alhaji Alhassan. The rest are Ambassador Mensa Bonsu, Hon Kwasi Amoako Atta, Dr. Raouf, Hon Matthew Prempeh and Dr Boakye Agyarko.

“Another source also told The aL-hAJJ that some of the corrupt Nigerian politicians and businessmen have also provided the needed financial support to this campaign of espionage against the Ghanaian government and President Mahama and they intend reaping the dividends if and when the party comes to power. Stay tuned, the story concluded.