Freed MP for Keta, Dan Abodakpi says he has no clue what wrong his family has committed against Ghana (after rendering dedicated and selfless services to her) but he believes he and his cousin Tsatsu Tsikata have been punished wrongly. According to Abodakpi, who was the guest of Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Monday, he bears no grudge against anyone for being sent to prison, and while he is grateful to President Kufuor for truncating his ten-year jail term, he hopes he hopes to fight on to clear his name, insisting that he was innocent of the charges of wilfully causing financial loss to the state that sent him to prison last year. “First of all I want to thank God, and to thank the President for having the grace to get me out of prison the way it happened. I’m breathing an air of freedom even though the conviction still hangs around my neck. I think it’s better to be out here to fight to clear one’s name than to be languishing in Nsawam. “My concern and hurt really now is that no sooner did I come out than my cousin Tsatsu Tsikata was jailed too. I have asked myself a thousand fold; what has our family done wrong in serving this country the way we did? In fact… I believe that we served with utmost honesty and dedication and I hope true justice will be done Tsatsu very quickly for him to come out.” Dan Abodakpi who spoke on a number of subjects, including his ministerial job, his trial, his constituents, family, justice and prison life and the NDC, said he had committed himself to serving Ghana and his incarceration notwithstanding, his resolve to continue offering his best to the country remains unshaken. “The competition is not among ourselves as Ghanaians, as a country Ghana is competing with the rest of the world. That is the reason why I keep saying that we want to put some of these feelings behind us and look with a new sense of hope into the future. A new beginning has to come and I know that with the NDC coming to power after the December 8 Election, it would be brought into being and we will continue to work to ensure that Ghana realises its dream of being a better place for everybody,” he told Kojo Oppong Nkrumah on the show. A former Trade Minister, Abodakpi who said the law of wilfully causing financial loss to the state is a good law that must be maintained and strengthened to ensure its operations really deter crime and not as a tool for political persecution said, the country’s justice system needs to be reformed to ensure real justice for all. He said while in prison, he came across people who were not supposed to be in prison but had landed there because of loopholes in the justice delivery system. Abodakpi said he was in consultation with some colleagues to start an advocacy for prison reforms. But he rejected claims that as an ex-convict, he had no mandate to remain in parliament, arguing that the laws provide that until the appeal processes are exhausted, he remains a member of parliament and that he would continue to fight on to clear his name. His cousin, Tsatsu Tsikata, the ex-Ghana National Petroleum Corporation CEO, is serving time at the Nsawam Prisons after he was convicted last month for causing financial loss to the state and jailed five years. Author: Isaac Yeboah