President John Dramani Mahama has made a passionate appeal once again to former Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta to return home to face one of the best jusicial systems in the world.
He said the former Minister should live true to his words when he was prevailed upon by lawmakers of his own party to resign during the tenure of his cousin, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
“I do believe that even by virtue of holding a position like that for many years, almost to the end of the regime, you held the most sensitive position as Finance Minister and at a point that your own members of Parliament, 80 of them, signed an application that the President should remove you, you said something historic.
“You said you are like a father of children and you can’t run away and leave your children and so if we Ghanaians are your children, we are begging you, we are calling you, ‘Father, come back’.
“Your children are calling you to come back,” President Mahama said on Friday, July 17 during the ‘Resetting Ghana’ tour in the Volta Region.
He insisted that if the former Finance Minister is a man of principle, he should not flee his own country.
Mr Ofori-Atta has been in the United States, where he overstayed his visa after travelling there for medical care.
Not even an extradition request by the Attorney General has seen him return to Ghana.
He has rather been offered a quasi-asylum by the US government.
“So, we will see what the legal regime is and how it proceeds but whatever it is if he is brought back he will have justice [because] we believe in the judicial system of our country.
“You have the best of lawyers to defend him but if he doesn’t come back too he leaves a cloud of doubt over his head forever and his children and his grandchildren, so we will see how that plays out.”