By Gifty Boateng
Hopeson Adorye, a former staunch member and communication team member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has disclosed how and why he lost his job at the VIP section of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).
Hopeson was removed from the airport in 2019, and he has not hidden the fact that some influential members in the previous government, very close to former president Akufo-Addo, masterminded everything.
He was given the marching orders barely two days after he married his wife, Empress Gifty.
Providing further and better particulars recently, the outspoken politician claimed, he was advised to divorce his wife and gospel singer whom he married few months after they met at a funeral. Hopeson had lost his German-based wife at the time.
The order was for him to leave his young marriage or his job will be taken away from him.
When he refused to follow the instructions, he was ousted immediately. Revisiting the issue in a recent interview, Hopeson said he was stunned by the development because NDC and NPP are not enemies and that the two parties are friends who party together.
“The kind of mentality is terrible. Meanwhile, you date NDC members. We married on 30 December 2018, January 1 2019, I had lost my job. People don’t know they just speak rubbish. What has marriage got to do with party colours? When asked the basis was because they suspected his wife to be NDC he reported “That was what they said”.
While rubbishing the claim of his wife being an NDC, he said he does not know her to have a party card.
He said what his wife told him was that while President John Mahama was vice president, she wished for him to take her to lunch on her birthday. She had made the post on social media.
Luckily, Mr Mahama saw the post and loved her song so he granted her the birthday wish. He said that was all that sparked the suspicion that his wife is affiliated to NDC.
“I don’t know my wife to possess NDC membership card. The only difference is that, she said one day on her birthday, she wrote “I wish vice president will take to lunch”. So, she said moments later, she received a call from John Jinapor [now Minister for Energy and Green Transition] who was Mr Mahama’s spokesperson then saying that vice president John Mahama said he will take you to lunch.
Then she asked if she could go with her former husband and he said no problem. So, they all went. She said she was so impressed by the gesture”.
According to Hopeson, from that time, a relationship was built between them and so anytime the president had a programme, his now wife was invited to perform.
“The president had indicated he loved a particular song ‘Fefeefe’ so even when he won the election petition at the Supreme Court [2012], she was invited to perform for him and so because of that she is NDC. Hopeson said whether his wife is NDC or not, “it does not matter, marriage has nothing to do with party colours”.
He said this does not deter him in any way because the NDC and NPP are friends and they meet and dine together all the time. “We are one, so why should you say that. What I have passed through, when I talk people should not think I have no sense.
Recall that when Hopeson was fired out of the blue from the airport, he was called back to the National Security by the then Minister Albert Kan Dapaah.
But later when it became apparent that he supported the presidential ambition of the then Minister for Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen, he was fired there too. He later left the NPP with the former minister to form the Movement for Change.
Few years after Hopeson’s incident, a former deputy national organizer of the NDC, Chief Biney also married a former deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MASLOC, under the NPP government, Maame Afua Akoto. The marriage which sparked controversy later collapsed.