Ghana Diabetes Association’s claim that a diabetes sensitisation program, Sugar Project, was plagiarised by Joy FM presenter Kojo Yankson has been debunked.
The broadcaster says he never held a meeting with the Association’s president, Elizabeth Denyo, in the UK where the proposal for the Sugar Project was allegedly discussed as she claimed at a presser Monday.
The GDA president has accused the Joy FM broadcaster of running her down in a documentary ‘Diabetic Diversion’ done by investigative journalist Kwetey Nartey.
She claimed, Kojo Yankson was behind the documentary.
In the documentary, Elizabeth Denyo was accused of diverting diabetes drugs received from Australian donors meant for children under the Life For A Child initiative.
The report also showed how some officials selected by the Association to distribute free insulin and glucometers were selling the drugs.
Fighting back, lawyers for Ghana Diabetes Association President have insisted she did no wrong.
She said the quantity of drugs appear inflated because the Association made provision for a likely increase in the number of persons diagnosed with the disease.
She said since the drugs are supplied once a year, the ‘inflation’ is to take care of fresh patients. Her lawyers described this as making a “reasonable margin of error”.
She also claimed, one of the beneficiaries of her Life For A Child initiative was Kojo Yankson.
The lawyers said at the press conference, that the Joy FM broadcaster requested for drugs from her after the country’s Central Medical Stores was razed down in 2015 triggering a shortage of drugs.
She also said the Sugar Project was her idea which she shared with Kojo Yankson at a meeting in England in 2013. She had hoped that the broadcaster would use the Joy FM platform to help the project gain wide public support.
Madam Denyo claimed Kojo Yankson offered her 200,000 of an unstated currency to buy off the idea.
But Kojo Yankson has rejected the claims, explaining that he was not a Joy FM employee while he was in England at the claimed 2013 meeting.
“So what platform was I offering her when she came to meet me in England?” he wanted to know.
He said since his return to Ghana on January 9, 2014, he has never gone back.
Kojo Yankson who is diabetic was emphatic that the claim of being a beneficiary is “palpably false”.
“First of all I never depended on the Central Medical Stores for diabetes drugs. I buy them privately from pharmacies. I have never received drugs from Madam Denyo,” he said.
Kojo Yankson who leads the Joy FM Sugar project said the GDA President was invited and participated in the January 2015 launch of the project in the studio. But she never raised claims of plagiarism.
In reaction, Madam Denyo said on Asempa FM Monday that she is willing to go according to the version of events provided by Kojo Yankson.
“Let us take what he says for now if that is what he says”, she told host KABA.
Joy FM procedure for investigative work requires that only the Joy News Managing Editor and the journalist on the beat are aware of the work.
Just like everyone else, journalists at the station only get to know of the investigations on the day the story is aired, which is what happened in this case.