Mahama under fire over transferring party cash to buy treasury bills

Mr Haruna Mohammed, Deputy General Secretary in charge of Finance and Administration of the People’s National Convention (PNC) has accused Dr Edward Mahama, the party’s 2016 elections flag bearer of diverting funds meant for campaign for his personal gains.

This he said was one of the major cause that accounted for the poor performance of the PNC in the 2016 elections.

Mr Mohammed made the accusation when he granted an interview to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Tuesday.

He said the leadership style and responded to the call of the party’s National Executives by the flag bearer was not good and was not always yielding the satisfactory results as expected by the party.

Anytime he was needed by the executives to discuss important issues pertaining the party, he was not available and this was across board nationwide.

The Deputy General Secretary said, the campaign team of the flag bearer during the elections was without a single National Executive of the party and that funds organized by the party and the flag bearer was used to buy Treasury Bills by the Dr Mahama for his personal gains.

“None of the members of the flag bearer campaign team were members of the PNC and that he is of the view that the flag bearer did not campaign to the party’s satisfaction.

He said the PNC late launch of their manifesto was not because of their disqualification by Electoral Commission but was due to the greediness of the flag bearer who at then wanted to use funds meant for the manifesto launch to organize coconut festival.

Mr Mohamed said the PNC manifesto was ready since March 2016 but the flag bearer's interest of organizing the coconut festival before the party manifesto launch delayed the launch.

He said Mr Hassan Ayariga, the predecessor of Dr Mahama performed creditably in campaigning than Dr Mahama and that Mr Ayariga was too bias towards other political parties especially the major opposition party.

The Deputy General Secretary therefore called on the leadership of the party to conduct an investigation into the matter and the party's poor performance in the 2016 General Elections and find a solution to the problem to avoid subsequent occurrences.

When the reporter contacted Dr. Mahama, he denied, adding that, he has no time for such frivolous accusations.

Dr. Mahama however stated that there was no element of truth in the issue and that there was no need for him to react to the issue.