President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has asked the New Patriotic Party (NPP) leadership to stop misleading their followers into thinking Wontumi’s sentencing was politically motivated.
Mr Cudjoe says Wontumi himself didn’t think his ordeal was political, based on what he told him weeks ago.
“Frankly, from my lunch with Chairman Wontumi about a month and a half ago, I didn’t sense his ordeal was politically engineered,” he wrote in a post on his Facebook wall Tuesday, July 21, 2026.
According to Cudjoe, Wontumi himself had told him he would’ve done things differently if he had another chance, making his claims that the sentencing was politically engineered untrue.
The IMANI boss says Wontumi said “If I had my way, there were things I would have done differently.”
His comments come on the back of the sentencing of Wontumi.
Bernard Antwi Boasiako, also known as Wontumi, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), has been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on each of two counts by the Accra High Court over illegal activities on a mining concession he owned at Samraboi in the Western region.
The sentences are to run concurrently. The court also fined him 10,000 penalty units on each of the two counts. Akonta Mining Limited, a company owned by Wontumi, which was convicted on two counts, was fined 15,000 penalty units on each count.
Meanwhile, the NPP leadership says the prosecution, conviction, and sentencing were not to serve justice but were expedited to jail their regional chairman because of his political affiliation.
READ ALSO: ‘Chairman Wontumi is a political prisoner’ – NPP’s General Secretary
Franklin Cudjoe has therefore advised the party leadership to stop misleading their followers, especially since Wontumi still has cases pending in court, where he has commenced refunding the sum involved.
“I advise the opposition NPP leadership to tread cautiously and not mislead followers by labeling Wontumi a “political prisoner,” especially with other grave cases against him still pending. He has agreed to refund millions in the Exim case, for instance,” he cautioned.
Franklin Cudjoe admonished the party faithful to “follow Honourable John Darko, Suame MP and Ashanti caucus leader, who urged calm while exploring legal options to challenge the ruling.”
Meanwhile, he expects Wontumi’s sentencing to set the roadmap for seeing success in the fight against galamsey, considering the fact that “this is one of the highest-profile successful prosecutions of an illegal mining case in Ghana.”
“It is my hope that it begins breaking the protective claws of politics from suspected big politicians engaged in illegal mining, so the law deals with them. That is the only way we can win the war against illegal mining and water pollution,” he added.
The IMANI President further called for consistency and fairness in the fight against the canker.
Wontumi et al: A call for legal consistency and fairness in Ghana’s fight against illegal mining
