Samuel Atta Akyea, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee probing the alleged leaked tape plotting the removal of the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr George Akuffo Dampare has dismissed claims that he is biased.
This comes after lawyers of the IGP accused the chairman of the ad-hoc committee of treating his client unfairly.
The IGP’s lead counsel, Kwame Gyan, said that Mr Atta Akyea had been noted for passing prejudicial comments after every sitting instead of maintaining impartiality.
He recounted a specific incident where the chairman publicly stated that an extended tape submitted by Bugri Naabu, a former Northern Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), had been doctored despite not being played publicly.
However, addressing the media in Parliament after the day’s in-camera hearing, Mr Atta Akyea refuted these claims stating that he has steered the affairs of the committee without prejudice.
“The word doctored I used is what did not sit well with him, but what I said is deduced from how it started. Was I not together with my committee members who afforded the IGP the best opportunity to speak to the press?
“The same chairman who afforded the IGP, together with my committee members, the opportunity to speak is being biased?
“This is a baseless allegation and the rest of the committee members thought that the lawyer, who accused me on radio, would be bold enough to repeat what he said, and they would have responded, but he didn’t.”
Atta Akyea also explained why the Committee refused members of the Police Service Management Board into Tuesday’s in-camera hearing.
“It will not be fair for non-witnesses to be present, that was the thinking of the committee. What’s the meaning of the in-camera? What’s the discrimination here? Why should we admit senior officers to come when they’re not going to speak? These are some absurd positions some can say and get away with it,” he stated.
The senior police officers had accompanied their boss Dr George Akuffo Dampare to the hearing as they did when he first appeared before the committee.
However, during the hearing today chairman of the committee Samuel Atta Akyea asked them to leave before the actual hearing began. The officers thus waited for the IGP in the conference room.