[ 2017-01-26 ]

Osafo Marfo, Agyarko cleared
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".

Source - classfmonline.com

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