Parliament’s Appointments Committee has finally
cleared Senior Minister-designate Yaw Osafo Marfo and Energy Minister-designate
Boakye Agyarko after their approval was withheld over certain
concerns.
They were given the all clear after some horse-trading between
the majority and minority sides of the house on Thursday.
The Minority in
Parliament had earlier vowed to block the approval of the two. Their eight other
colleagues who have also been vetted were cleared. They include Alan Kyerematen
– Trade, Ken Ofori-Atta – Finance, Dominic Nitiwul – Defence, Albert Kan-Dapaah
– National Security, Gloria Akuffo – Attorney General and Justice Minister,
Ambrose Dery – the Interior, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey – Foreign Affairs, and
Hajia Alima Mahama – Local Government & Rural Development.
With
regards to Mr Osafo Marfo, the committee withheld his approval pending further
investigation into alleged ethnocentric comments he made in 2015.
When he
appeared before the committee on 20 January, Mr Marfo denied ever saying or
implying that only Ghanaians from five resource-rich regions, all of which
happen to be Akan-dominated areas in the country, should lead Ghana.
In
February 2015, he was reported as saying even though about 90 per cent of
Ghana’s natural resources were concentrated in the five mainly Akan-speaking
regions, it is rather people who come from resource-poor regions who were at the
helm of affairs at the time he made those alleged comments.
The comment
was contained on an audiotape secretly recorded as the former Finance Minister,
who is also the Chairman of the New Patriotic Party’s Eastern regional Council
of Elders, was addressing some party members ahead of the 2016 general
elections.
Mr Marfo, who spoke the Twi language punctuated with some
English, was heard bemoaning why Akan-speaking people, whose regions are rich
with natural resources, are not the ones at the helm of managing those
resources.
“…You have all the resources, but you have no say in the
management of your resources and that is what is happening. Your development
depends on the one who has no resources,” he said, cautioning: “You can’t say
this openly,” except among Asantes. “We should protect ourselves, we should
protect our income. No one who is the source of income, the source of revenue,
the source of resources allows another person without those resources the chance
[to rule over them]. It’s never done anywhere in the world. In the world over,
it is the group with the most resources that rules and not the other way
around,” he added.
In his estimation, as reported at the time, “86.5 per
cent of resources in Ghana come from five regions: Brong Ahafo, Ashanti,
Eastern, Western, and Central. This is where 86 per cent of the resources of
Ghana come from. … And the oil was also discovered in the West. It will change
the formula to about 90 per cent. We cannot ignore these five regions. We should
not.”
Clarifying the comment to the Appointments Committee of Parliament
on Friday, 20 January during his vetting as Senior Minister-designate, Mr Osafo
Marfo said: “This is one of those distorted ‘cut and paste’
statements.
“I’m the Chairman of the Council of Elders of the NPP in the
Eastern Region. We were fighting this election [2016] on the economy and I was
giving a series of lectures on the economy to various groups within the region.
When it got to the turn of the Council of Elders, the regional chair spoke, Hon
Hackman spoke, I spoke and I spoke on the economy, but you don’t talk about the
economy by starting with the resource location; … I started by talking about how
poorly this economy has been managed that we have gone from GHS9.4bn debt to
GHS110bn debt at the time, and how growth, without oil, was 1.9bn and had
dwindled to about 4% etc., … And I said something which I’ve said in this room:
that Ghana is not poor and that the resource base of this country is found in
five regions and I mentioned the regions specifically because I was making a
strong economic argument.
“Now people removed all that I said about the
poor management of the economy and then made it look like I started by talking
about the resource locations of this thing and put it forward and changed
certain things to make me look like I was being a tribalist and it was bad, this
is where I find people very mischievous; … You take the whole thing out of
context and make it look very tribalistic, so, I think, yes, it happened,
newspapers reported something wrong and I think people should be ashamed of
themselves when they do this kind of ‘cut and paste’ to create that wrong
impression in the system…” Mr Osafo Marfo clarified.
He refused to
apologise for the alleged comment when he appeared before the committee. “Mr
Chairman, I cannot apologise for what I have not said.”
Ekow Annan
earlier reported that the Minority also felt Mr Osafo Marfo lied to the
committee about the botched CNTCI and IFC loan deals.
Explaining himself
on the two deals when he appeared before the committee, Mr Osafo Marfo said a
section of the Ghanaian public played mischief with issues that arose from the
Chinese New Techniques Construction Investment Company (CNTCI) loan debacle,
cynically christened “Salon Loan”, approved by parliament on April 13,
2004.
Mr Marfo, who was the Minister of Finance at the time the loan was
approved, suffered severe backlash from some Ghanaians especially members of the
National Democratic Congress (NDC) for failing to conduct due diligence after
questions about the company’s identity arose and subsequently when the address
it provided was traced to a beauty salon in the UK.
The General Secretary
of the NDC at the time, the late Dr Josiah Aryeh, at a press conference in Accra
had said: “The identity or identities of the lenders, the intricate corporate
maze known as the CNTCI, the conflicting and confusing addresses and
telephone/fax numbers, the concealment of critical conditions of the agreement
from the Loan Agreement and from the documentation submitted to Parliament,
including the issue of the bank guarantee and the sole-sourcing undertakings,
all point to one thing. Something is wrong somewhere. Someone is not telling the
truth to Ghanaians.
He also suffered similar flak in connection with the
IFC loan deal during the Kufuor administration.
The NDC at the time said
it wrote to Interpol seeking assistance to unravel the mystery over the botched
loan agreements. “Coming so soon after the IFC debacle, we must, as a country,
take precaution against those who may be out to take this country for a
ride.”
But responding to these issues during his vetting on January 20,
Mr Marfo said: “The report we had on the IFC were positive, Barclays did it on
our behalf because we were looking for a long-term finance.”
“But along
the line we wanted to know the bank, where the money they intend to give us was
located, because there should be evidence that you have the financial muscle to
provide that type of loan.
“We then had difficulty getting that
confirmation on location and payout and I came to parliament to say that in view
of the difficulty we were getting on the location and the financial muscle even
though we have positive reports, we were withdrawing that whole
application.
“Some people were mischievous with the issue especially in
the media and that worked for them.”
As far as Mr Agyarko’s nomination
was concerned, committee member Mubarak Muntaka told Accra-based Joy FM on
Wednesday that “for the nominee to say the World Bank was breathing down the
neck of former President Mahama, it was very much uncalled
for".
