The two dailies gave front-page prominence to General Abubakar’s exoneration of President Rawlings of the $5 m bribe allegation. The Graphic headline reads; “Abubakar absolves Rawlings” whiles the Times has “$ 5m bribe story not true- Abubakar”.
The Daily Graphic says the Nigerian Leader; yesterday absolved President Rawlings of any wrongdoing when he categorically denied that his country paid money to the Ghanaian leader to help improve her international image.
The paper says over the last couple of months, sections of the media in Nigeria and Ghana have been carrying stories based on allegations which was first published in the Nigerian Post Express newspaper, that Alhaji Ishmaila Gwarzo, the former Security Advisor of the late Gen. Sani Abacha had alleged that he paid $5 million to President Rawlings to help whitewash Nigeria’s image.
The Times quotes Abubakar as saying, “there is no iota of truth in that statement. We have not found such allegation anywhere in the report submitted by the panel of enquiry”.
General Abubakar is said to have made this denial in an answer to a question at a news briefing at the Kotoka International airport in Accra, when he made a stopover on his way to Conakry, Guinea to witness the coronation of President Lansana Conteh and to attend a summit of ECOWAS leaders.
Other headlines on the Graphic front-page are, “Interest rate now down to 32%”, “WAEC introduces new English syllabus”, “New wage policy effective January 1” and “cover price of Graphic, others up”.
The Times has other headlines like “NPP won’t oppose state funding, but…”, “Govt agencies told to use Y2K computers” and “Casual labourers need protection”.
