Ghana prisons. File photo.
The New Patriotic Party’s MP nominee for Bantama, Daniel Okyem Aboagye, has said he prefers being jailed in the U.S.A. to doing time in Ghana’s prison because America’s penitentiaries are homely.
His comment follows claims that he risks violating the electoral laws of Ghana if he contests in the parliamentary elections and becomes the Member of Parliament because he holds dual citizenship.
There have been reports that the NPP in the Bantama constituency in the Ashanti Region has lined up Henry Kwabena Kokofu – the incumbent MP who lost out to Mr Aboagye in the party’s primaries in 2015 – to replace him (Mr Aboagye) should he fail to make it through the Electoral Commission’s vetting process.
Ghana’s laws bar a person of multiple nationality from running for public office. It would be recalled that former Bawku Central MP, Adamu Daramani Sakande, was jailed for holding dual citizenship.
There are speculations that Mr Aboagye could be sued for deceiving a public officer through forgery if he manages to sail through to become the MP, thus, the party’s resort to a risk management strategy of purportedly filing Mr Kokofu’s nomination to run as an independent aspirant.
But speaking in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Monday October 3, Mr Aboagye, also known as Wofa Atta, denied the claims of dual nationality, saying: “I am smart enough to realise that what happened to our brother, Sakande, can befall me, so why will I engage in such an act?”
“If you want to do a risk management or backup, then there is the need for us all to sit and deliberate on the matter. Secondly, I do not have dual citizenship; I have never been a dual citizen. It is out of love for Ghana that I left my job in the United States of America to return home. Over there, I was being taking care of properly as an accountant, but due to the mismanagement of the Ghanaian economy by the NDC government, I decided to come back to Ghana to help fix the problem.
“My ambition to be a Member of Parliament in Ghana was nurtured as far back as 1994. Since that time, I have taken steps to ensure that I become an MP. I have never been a citizen of another country and I will never do that. I will not say that Americans are not good; they lead Ghana in almost everything, but the love for my country Ghana will not let me sell my citizenship.
“Do you think I want what befell Adamu Sakande to happen to me? Do you think I will leave America to come and become an MP in Ghana and later be incarcerated? I will rather prefer to violate the laws in America and be incarcerated in America than be in a Ghanaian prison because America’s prisons are just like your home. I will never do that. I am smarter than that.”
