Source: newsthemegh.com/By Manasseh Azure Awuni
In 2013, someone called me and we met at the Press Centre in Accra.
“I’m giving this lead to you because I can trust you,” he said. I hadn’t done that job before. I hadn’t learnt it in my first and second degrees in journalism. I had no experience. But I took up the challenge, even without understanding its full weight and implications.
This source trusted me because our paths had crossed two years earlier and he said he could vouch for my integrity.
But integrity was not enough. A special skill was needed. I lacked that skill but fell on the traditional tenets of journalism, common sense and a little intelligence.
The evidence of wrongdoing, which the source gave me in our first meeting was worth 23,000 cedis (about $11,000). It became a 1 billion cedi (about $500 million) scandal, involving ministers of state, powerful businesses and persons who were politically connected at the highest level.
When the dust settled on the story that would earn me the title “investigative journalist”:
1. Two people went to jail.
2. About a dozen lost their jobs.
3. The Youth Employment Agency Act was passed by Parliament.
4. About 60 million cedis was retrieved from RLG and its sister companies.
5. All the GYEEDA contracts were cancelled, except one.
6. The cancellations saved Ghana not less than 500 million cedis.
7. The reforms did not resolve the issues entirely, but they significantly reduced brazen looting.
8. Some of the companies that were plugged into the pipeline of the state treasury collapsed while others never remained the same.
It has been 10 years since circumstances drew me into the arena of investigative reporting. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been worth it.
When I grow up, I will write a book. And in that book, I will tell some of the harrowing backstories and near misses and the mental torture and the difficulty in turning one’s back to worried family members and fighting for those who may not even appreciate it.
And it’s not all doom and gloom. Being fully funded by Harvard to be here for a year is one of the many blessings that have come my way.
For now, I can only thank God for a decade of my modest contribution to the development of my country.
I thank those who have stood by me these 10 years, especially my family for sharing in the risks. I thank those who have never met me but pray for me. I thank those who have constructively criticised my work and held me to high standards.
The Multimedia Group deserves a special mention. I couldn’t have done what I did at Joy FM in any other media house in Ghana. The Multimedia Group also paid for all my legal fees, including the Jospong defamation suit I got from my Facebook post about the company’s corruption.
And that brings me to one of the most important pillars of my journey, Samson Anyenini. By watching how he conducts his legal affairs, I learnt to be more meticulous as a journalist, a reason the likes of Zoomlion ran away from their own cases against me.
When I received my first defamation suit in 2015, the first place I visited was the toilet. The content of the writ instantly developed an unholy correlation with my bowels.
When I wrote my defence in a layperson’s language and sent it to my lawyer, he said if he were the lawyer at the other end of the case, he would advise his client to discontinue the case.
Indeed, that case was discontinued.
Between 2015 and 2022, I was sued EIGHT times for defamation.
Only one of them has gone to trial. (It’s still ongoing).
Have I been happy as an investigative journalist?
No.
But I am fulfilled that, through this kind of reporting, Ghana has saved hundreds of millions of dollars that were destined for private bank accounts and that some have got the justice that would have eluded them. I am fulfilled that I have inspired others to see the nobility in this brand of journalism.
May the future and its challenges be bright.