Politics
More than four decades later, Major Adjei -Ampofo can still remember the unusual sight of campaign money arriving at his office and the lengths to which he went to keep it secure.
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“They came in boxes of cash” — Former UNIGOV aide recalls hiding campaign money in his office and even his home
For Major Adjei -Ampofo, the 1978 Union Government campaign was not just about political rallies, military strategy and a controversial referendum.
It was also about boxes.
Boxes filled with cash.
More than four decades later, Major Adjei -Ampofo can still remember the unusual sight of campaign money arriving at his office and the lengths to which he went to keep it secure.
“They came in boxes of cash,” he recalled in an interview with Kafui Dey.
“I was keeping them… it came in boxes, and my office was wooden panel several boxes could go into lockdown.”
The money was needed because the campaign machinery behind General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong’s Union Government proposal was struggling financially.
“We were short of cash because we didn’t have enough money,” Major Adjei -Ampofo said.
But the cash did not simply sit in his office.
Some of it followed him home.
Major Adjei Ampofo remembers one particular moment when his wife noticed that the campaign had begun taking over their domestic space.
“I remember one day my wife said, ‘You follow the boxes here in the house,’” he said, laughing.
It was a reflection of how deeply involved he had become in the campaign’s logistics.
On weekends, according to his account, Major Adjei-Ampofo would load four or five boxes of money into his Mercedes 280 and set off to distribute funds to campaign organisers in different parts of the country.
He had a list.
The destinations included areas in the Ashanti and Northern regions, where campaigners needed financial support for their work.
For Major Adjei -Ampofo, however, handling the money did not mean the money belonged to him.
He insists his role was logistical rather than personal.
When asked about the businessmen who provided the funds, he was reluctant to identify them.
“I can name them, but I don’t want to name them,” he said.
More than 45 years later, he chose not to put their names into the public record.
His account also draws a distinction between the campaign operation and the running of the country.
“I wasn’t running the country,” he said. “I wasn’t particularly involved” in policy.
Yet his recollection makes clear that he occupied an important position inside the machinery of a campaign that would become one of the most contentious political episodes of Ghana’s military era.
And then came the vote.
The 1978 Union Government referendum remains controversial, with allegations of manipulation and claims that the government interfered with the electoral process.
Major Adjei Ampofo, who served as vice-chairman of the UNIGOV referendum committee, strongly disputes the idea that the government ordered the vote to be rigged.
“From where I was, I didn’t see the rigging, and we didn’t issue any orders to rig the election,” he said.
“Our feedback didn’t show that we were rigging anything.”
But while rejecting allegations of government rigging, Major Adjei -Ampofo says he believed there were serious problems within the electoral process itself.
One of the incidents that angered him most, he recalled, involved the electoral register.
According to Major Adjei Ampofo, about 100 names were missing from the register, leaving some voters unable to find their names when they went to vote.
“About 100 people’s names on the list were missing,” he said.
The issue, he recalled, became so frustrating that he confronted Justice Aban, the electoral commissioner overseeing the referendum.
“I was very furious,” Major Adjei Ampofo said. “I had words with him and his assistant.”
But that was not the only episode that stayed with him.
The most extraordinary part of Major Adjei Ampofo’s recollection concerns what happened on election day.
He says the BBC announced that General Acheampong had lost the referendum at a time when, in his view, the counting process was nowhere near complete.
His reaction was one of disbelief.
“How come BBC is announcing the full result?” he recalled asking.
“It must have been fake, because just an hour or two into the election, they declared a result.”
According to Major Adje- Ampofo, the broadcast triggered a dramatic response.
He says a brigade commander sent troops to the electoral commission to remove BBC correspondents after the report.
He further recalls that Justice Abban subsequently went into hiding for about two weeks because he feared he could be arrested.
What made the episode even more remarkable, Major Adjei -Ampofo said, was that the government ultimately believed it had won the referendum.
Justice Abban, he recalled, did not know this at the time.
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