Deputy Information Minister Baba Jamal has described former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings as a frustrated person in reaction to her remarks regarding the accommodation challenge besetting her family, after losing the previous one to a fire outbreak on February 14, 2010.
Nana Konadu had told NDC supporters in Tamale during her recent ‘thank you tour’ that no accommodation had been provided for them after the deadly inferno that razed down their Ridge official residence. “Not even one shovel of sand has been deposited at our Ridge Residence which fire gutted some months ago. I would have been the first person to come round and inform you that government has renovated our Ridge Residence, it is a lie,” she debunked the government propaganda.
Baba Jamal had been called for an update on the reconstruction effort of the burnt house when he flipped and chastised the former First Lady.
The deputy minister was parrying the question posed by XFM, owned by Herbert Mensah, a friend of the Rawlingses, regarding how far reconstruction works had gone on the building, when he threw a stone into the hornet’s nest by explaining to his host with a wave of the hand, as it were, that there were more important issues than the accommodation of the Rawlingses. “I do not want to waste my breath on this matter. There are more important issues for government to deal with instead of such unnecessary distractions,” he said, adding that he could not waste his time on the frustrated woman.
His insistent host rephrased the question and had the following inclement response; “I won’t waste my time on that issue. If there are more important matters to be discussed, let’s discuss them.”
He asked the host rhetorically whether as a Ghanaian; she did not think that the there were more important questions than the reconstruction of the accommodation for the Rawlingses.
Former President Rawlings, he said, was not the only former head of state and that if the Rawlingses felt they were not being treated properly by government, there were available channels for them to use, thereby dismissing the accommodation issue of the former first couple as “unnecessary distractions”.
Aide to former President Rawlings Kofi Adams, in an interview on Oman FM yesterday, said as deputy Minister of information, Baba Jamal could be stating government’s position regarding the accommodation challenge being suffered by his boss. It was up to government to dissociate itself from the remarks of the deputy minister if the remarks did not represent its position, Mr. Adams said.