Outspoken Alfred Kwame Agbesi has resigned as a member of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) board.
Mr Agbesi, who is the Member of Parliament for Ashaiman, tendered in his resignation letter to President Atta Mills on Monday May 10, 2010, at the Castle, Koku Anyidoho, Director of Communications at the Presidency, confirmed on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show hosted by Evans Mensah on Friday.
Prior to his resignation, Mr Agbesi had been critical of the President’s decision to dismiss Dr Kwame Ampofo as the Acting Managing Director of TOR. He is on record to have said Dr Ampofo was used as a sacrificial lamb.
“It is not Kwame Ampofo; it is not the board; it is not the management; but liquidity,” he told Joy News in an interview hours after the managing director was dismissed.
Nonetheless, Mr Anyidoho says Mr Agbesi conceded to the president that he had been speaking without being privy to the facts. This was when President Mills personally invited him over the issue on his return from Equatorial Guinea.
“He did what he should not have done, he said what he should not have said,†Mr Anyidoho noted.
He said having realized he had “no solid grounds†for his sentiment, and that he was “side-stepping†the issue, Mr Agbesi humbly resigned from the board, and his resignation was accepted by the President.
“He decided that I have not discharged my duties to the best of my abilities, I have not respected the fact and I have said things that I shouldn’t have said. So for me I think that I can’t continue to function any longer as a member of the TOR board because I may not have the confidence of the board and I may not have the confidence of, as it were, right-thinking people in government. So I am stepping aside,†Mr Anyidoho recounted.
He denied that Mr Agbesi was pressurized to resign, saying rather that, by his own action, Mr Agbesi “fell on his own swordâ€Â.
Story by Isaac Essel