General News of Monday, 20 February 2017
Source: classfmonline.com
2017-02-20
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa faced the committee to oversee probing into the alleged bribery case
Member of Parliament for North Tongu Constituency Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has told the Ghartey Committee he will never conspire to bear false witness against a ministerial nominee.
His comment comes on the back of a bribery allegation leveled against the leadership of the Appointments Committee.
Bawku Central MP Mahama Ayariga has alleged that Mr Boakye Agyarko, the then-Minister of Energy-designate through the Chair of the committee, Mr Joe Osei-Owusu, attempted to bribe Minority members of the committee through Minority Chief Whip Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka to approve his nomination.
Mr Osei-Owusu had informed the committee when he appeared before them that Mr Ablakwa had told him the allegation was a joke to equalise the NPP’s claims that former president John Dramani Mahama was corrupt.
But Mr Ablakwa told the five-member ad hoc committee investigating the allegation on Monday February 20 that the evidence given by Mr Osei-Owusu that he [Okudzeto] had said the allegation was a joke, was untrue.
“I will never go into a conspiracy to, as it were, bear false witness against a ministerial nominee just because we want to spread corruption around because that nominee had alleged that our president or somebody is corrupt. I will not be part of any such conspiracy, and, so, when the honourable Joe Osie-Owusu, the chairman of the committee, made these statement before you, I thought that I should seek the opportunity to come before you to also be heard and to state unequivocally that that cannot be true,” he stated.
