The Minority Chief Whip has descended hard on his colleague Minority Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, saying the latter lied over his claims about an alleged bribery scandal involving the Energy Minister.
Mr. Ayariga has asserted that, then a nominee, Mr. Boakye Agyarko, offered members of the Minority on Parliament’s Appointment Committee 3,000 cedis each to influence them to approve his nomination as the Energy Minister.
Speaking on TV3’s New Day show Saturday, the former Minister of Environment Science and Technology stood by his allegation saying “I will stand by this fact wherever I go. Hon Muntaka told us that the chairman told him the money is coming from Boakye Agyarko, and we said no we are not interested” and returned the money.
However, Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mohammed Mubarak in an interview on Joy FM’s News File show, Saturday, refuted Mr Ayariga’s assertion saying he was stupified by the information put out by the latter.
“Let me say this…I’m saying this with a lot of difficulty, because I know the rules. When you’re in the leadership and any of your members do things rationally you just keep quiet. But I just want to say this and I’ll not say anything, I’m a Moslem and Ayariga is a Moslem…I’m swearing by Allah who has created he and I. I never gave Ayariga anything saying it came from Osei Owusu, [Chairman of the Appointments Committee] and Osei Owusu has never discuss any money issue with me, he’s never given me any money to be given to Ayariga and I’ve never given Ayariga or anybody money saying that it was coming from the Chairman.”
He added:“That’s all that I’ll say, because we’re in the Leadership and I think leadership will have to take this thing up seriously. I don’t know where Ayariga is having this information that he’s purporting and saying all these things. We had several meeting before we started, we ourselves agreed in principle that we’re not going to take a dime from anybody. That’s all I’ll tell you for now.”
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