The Kumasi Youth Association (KUYA) has instructed management of Daily Guide Newspaper to visit the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi to beg the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II before their office keys will be released.
Some aggrieved members of KUYA this morning stormed and ransacked Daily Guide office in Kumasi after publishing a story indicating that the Asantehene is engaged in money laundering in the UK and that his diplomatic passport has expired.
This came up after a staff of the International Bank Mark Arthur was sacked for depositing some monies belonging to Otumfuo in the bank without going through the right procedure.
But speaking with Lantam Papanko on Ultimate Breakfast Show, the Organiser of the group Felix Ibrahim indicated that the office will remain locked until an unqualified apology is rendered to the Otumfuo and Asanteman as a whole.
‘The best thing is they should go to Manhyia and plead, after that they can go and open their office, is as simple as A.B.C, we will report the incident and the next step will be followed,’ he stated.
According to him, the Newspaper has disrespected the Asantehene adding that staff of Daily Guide would have been thrown out of the ‘evil forest’ if it were to be in the olden days.
He said the leadership of the party did not sanction the lock up condemning the action by the group.
He called on their members to calm down asking Daily Guide to retract the publications on its front page.
‘We want to put it on record that KUYA has not officially sanctioned any individual to lock up the Daily Guide’s office…. They made bad comments about his royal majesty and must retract and apologise…They disrespected the leader of the Asante kingdom with that publication. Those individuals would have been cast out of the Asante kingdom into the evil forest, because of modernity, we are taking things for granted,’ he fumed.
He indicated that he ensure that the police fish out the members of the group who engaged in that act.
The group after locking the office wrote their names on the wall. Staff of other companies who work in the building located at Fanti New Town in Kumasi were stranded.
Background:
Mr. Arthur was dismissed after the traditional ruler of the Kingdom of Ashanti, summoned him to his multimillion-pound residence in Henley-on-Thames and handed him a bag containing almost £200,000 in sterling as well as $200,000 in US currency for saving at the bank.
The aggrieved banker, from New Barnet, Hertfordshire, a dual citizen of the UK and Ghana, drove to his own home with the cash and then took it in an Uber taxi to the bank’s City offices for deposit in the king’s account, he told an employment tribunal.
Mr Arthur after he was sacked in a statement said.“Mr Arthur has consistently confirmed in evidence that at no time did he suspect that the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, did anything wrong’.
