The Information Minister and also the member of parliament for the Ofoase-Ayirebi constituency, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has rejected allegations in a 37- page report on illegal mining that accuses him of orchestrating a plan to destroy the former Minister for Science, Environment, Technology and Innovation, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng.
The report authored by Prof. Frimpong-Boateng accused Mr Oppong Nkrumah of organising a secret meeting of NPP and NDC Journalists on February 8th 2020 in Dodowa to discuss a strategy to bring him (Prof Boateng) down.
According to Frimpong-Boateng, the outcome of the meeting led to subsequent negative media reports about him.
But in a response, Mr Oppong Nkrumah described the claims as completely false.
According to him, he only attended a PRINPAG (Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana) event, jointly organised with the Bank of Ghana on financial reporting and never held any meeting to oust anybody from the government.
“Indeed, the facts are that it was Prof Frimpong-Boateng himself who wrote to the Ghana Police Service in January 2020 reporting the loss of some excavators and calling for an investigation. It was Prof. Frimpong-Boateng himself who in subsequent media interviews mentioned that the number of excavators missing was about 500. Again on or around February 20, 2020, it was Prof Frimpong-Boateng himself who at Parliament House (During interviews on the SONA) engaged in exchanges with the media about the said excavators and promised that they will be recovered”.
“For the record, these are the matters that occasioned the media reports about Prof Frimpong-Boateng and the said excavators. Further, it was Prof. Frimpong-Boateng himself who was later to be seen in a video making comments about the anti-galamsey fight and the release of excavators.
“I Kojo Oppong Nkrumah was not responsible for his initial police report, his subsequent interviews, or any of the claims he made. To be clear, it was Prof Frimpong-Boateng’s own reports, interviews and videos that generated his media challenges around the time. I am thus disappointed that he would, in this document, seek to blame me for the media reports.”
“Over the years, I had nothing but great admiration for Prof Frimpong-Boateng’s public- spirited works and as an inspirational citizen. I feel gravely offended over the false claims he has made and the hurtful conclusions he has sought to exact about me precisely because of the great esteem in which I have held him.
“I trust that in the coming months and years, he will reflect deeply upon his own actions and comments which have led to his challenges. He should kindly leave me out of his personal fights. I am utterly disappointed but I forgive him.”
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