Celebrated Ghanaian lawyer, Tsatsu Tsikata, has recounted how he almost lost his life 12 years ago after he was wrongfully sentenced to prison.
According to the Former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), he is not bitter over the experience or the judge and that he is grateful his life was spared.
“I could have been dead because I had an asthmatic attack at the end, but by God’s grace, I am still alive.
“I have a lot to be grateful for in terms of the support that I received from my wife, my siblings, my mother, my family and all the people who I have never met before in the country and other parts of the world,” he acknowledged.
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He said these when speaking in an interview on Accra-based TV3.
“It was such an unexpected and extraordinary event that day June 18, 2008, but as I look back now I take it as something that happened.
“Unfortunate as it was, it took me through a further five months in which I experienced what I can only call a lot of blessings from God,” he recounted.
Mr Tsikata was sentenced for willfully causing financial loss to the State through a loan that the GNPC guaranteed for Valley Farms, a private cocoa-growing company.
Justice Henrietta Abban convicted him after he was found guilty on three counts of willfully causing financial loss of GH¢230,000 to the State and another count of misapplying public funds.
Though former President John Kufuor granted him a presidential pardon, he rejected it on grounds that his trial was politically motivated, and that he did no wrong.
He later filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal and was accordingly acquitted and discharged in 2016.
The court upheld that he was denied a fair trial when the High Court gave a judgment in spite of an appeal.
