Ibrahim Mahama, brother of President John Mahama, has sued the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, for defamation.

He is demanding amongst other things, two million cedis damages from the NPP regional chairman who is popularly known as Chairman Wontumi.

In a writ filed at an Accra Fast Track High Court, Mr. Ibrahim Mahama said Chairman Wontumi made defamatory statements against him at a public gathering in Obuasi on March 30 this year.

According to his statement of claim, the offending statement claimed that, “President Mahama and his brother Ibrahim have loaded all the money into their pockets. Each and every day they increase petrol prices and then you and I, the downtrodden, suffer to pay for the increases – they keep the monies in their pockets, and use it to buy planes – aeroplanes – in which they fly.  Each week, President Mahama and his brother, Ibrahim, travel to South Africa.  You, my brother, the monies President Mahama has given to his brother, - have you got any?  Does someone pay for your children’s school fees?”

Mr. Mahama said, the large gathering which Chairman Wontumi was addressing understood his comments to mean that he (Mahama) "is a thief and a dishonest man with criminal tendencies."

The CEO of Engineers & Planners said "The defamatory statements were made in a manner that was calculated to cause maximum damage and hurt his... reputation by causing him to be unanimously held in contempt and disdain throughout the nation; indeed the Defendant concluded his defamatory statements by letting out a clarion call for a people’s uprising to “replicate what happened in Tunisia.”

He wants the court to declare the statement as false, malicious and defamatory.

Mr. Ibrahim Mahama is also seeking an "Order directed at the Defendant compelling him to publish a full and unqualified apology to the Plaintiff and retraction of the statements made in all the newspapers and tabloids in which the defamatory statements were repeated by their publication of same."

Read the full writ andstatement of claim here.