Retired Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Benjamin Agordzo has shed light on a pivotal conversation he had with the former Inspector General of Police (IGP), James Oppong-Boanuh, just before his arrest in November 2019.
Agordzo recounted the unfolding events, stating, “It all started on one Thursday. I had just returned from Winneba after teaching master of philosophy students, and then I received a call from the then IGP. I don’t want to mention names, okay? Okay, the then IGP. Um, and I realized that there was some urgency in his call. ‘Ben, where are you? Where are you?'”
The retired ACP emphasized the unusual urgency in the IGP’s tone and directive to meet immediately. “And I said I was in town. ‘See me in my office right now.’ I was a bit concerned because we had been speaking, and he had never spoken to me that way.”
“I went there only to be informed that the BNI wanted to see me and that I should report to the BNI the next day, which was a Friday”, he said.
Agordzo, curious about the reason for the urgency, sought information about the summons from then Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) now National Intelligence Bureau (NIB). “I asked my IGP whether they had given any reasons for my invitation. He said no. I said, ‘Could you please find out? Because I needed to know why I’m going to the BNI.'”
Despite promising to get back to Agordzo with the information, the former IGP provided no reasons for the BNI summons. Agordzo continued, “That Friday I told him I was traveling to… (Did not complete sentence) And I had returned from a mission, and I had not reported officially to the police service. So, I was free to move. ‘Okay.’ So, I told him I was going for a funeral.”
However, Agordzo discovered that news of his arrest and bail had circulated even before he reported. “Interestingly, by the time I got home at Vakpo, the news was all over. The news was all over that I had been arrested and granted bail. Nobody had arrested me then,” he recounted.
He highlighted the apparent propaganda and premeditation behind the situation. “That tells you the propaganda behind the whole thing because they had already planned everything and schemed it in such a way that they had already given our names out to certain media houses and other things. So, whether I reported or not, it was reported that I had reported because they were sure that I was going to report that Friday. And so, even though I did not report, it was there. So, Monday, I reported.”
“That was the beginning of a very long story, taking me over four and a half almost four years, three months,” Dr Agordzo noted.
This revelation adds a new layer to the circumstances surrounding Agordzo’s detention, raising questions about the motives behind his summons by the NIB. The former IGP’s alleged role in this sequence of events becomes a focal point, further intensifying the intrigue surrounding the case.