Former CEO of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Tsatsu Tsikata has explained his reason for rejecting former President John Agyekum Kufuor’s presidential pardon in 2008.

According to the legal luminary, former President J. A. Kufuor’s administration was bent on jailing him.

Speaking in an interview on an Accra-based station, Pan African TV, the lead counsel for the petitioner, John Mahama, in the ongoing election petition, observed that there was a plot to undo the achievement chalked by former President Rawlings in the oil and gas industry.

As such, he was made a scapegoat, since he was the CEO of the Commission during the Rawlings administration.

On Wednesday, June 8, 2008, a High Court presided over by Justice Henrieta Abban jailed Mr Tsikata for wilfully causing financial loss to the state.

But eight years on, the Court of Appeal ruled that the High Court unjustly jailed Mr Tsikata and subsequently cleared him of any wrongdoing after Mr Tsikata filed for an appeal.

“There was a ‘determination’ by the Kufuor government to find fault with how Rawlings had handled the GNPC and I knew it would come down to him,” Tsatsu said.

“I had been involved in GNPC under President Rawlings and I was seen as someone close to Rawlings. A lot of credit has to be given to his interest at the time in creating GNPC.”

According to him, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had to struggle to find faults with his stewardship as Head of the GNPC

“Unfortunately in this country, when a new government come, they wanted to throw overboard the things that he had done. I had headed GNPC during that time and I became a target.

“I could see by the beginning of 2001, the determination, by hook or crook to find something against me. That is what led to all these interesting cases against me”, he said.

Tsatsu also spoke about the court processes that led to him ending up at the Nsawam Prison.

“I went to the Supreme Court and the Fast Track Court was declared unconstitutional. They changed the panel and added two more panels to form the review. In those days, there were people criticizing the judges’ decision in my favor.

“You should go and listen to what President Akufo-Addo who was the Attorney-General then said about the judges. There was a determination to overturn that decision. Justice Afreh was appointed, another judge was also appointed so from a 5-4 in my favor it became 6-5 against me,” he said.