Ministerial Vetting: Don’t get it wrong – Lecturer to Parliament

Head of the Political Science Department at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr Samuel Adu-Gyamfi has asked the Appointments Committee of Parliament to do a good job on the ministerial nominees of President Akufo-Addo.

Dr Adu Gyamfi told TV3’s Johnnie Hughes that if the president gets his nominations wrong, the representatives of the people in the legislature should not.

“What the president is doing is that he is presenting his people he has selected to provide the public good to the people.

“He is saying that when you gave him the power these are the people I am selecting from amongst you, do you agree? When the president gets it wrong the people should also not get it wrong,” he said.

The Committee is currently screening President Akufo-Addo’s nominees.

A security analyst Richard Kumadoe complained about the way and manner the committee is screening the ministerial nominees.

He said the nominees are giving artificial answers because the entire process looks too artificial.

He said this in an interview with Berla Mundi on the New Day show on TV3, Thursday, February 18.

Mr. Kumadoe expressed that no ministerial nominee has taken responsibility for the contract procured for the Frontiers Health Care Services testing for COVID-19 at the airport when it was opened to traffic in September last year.

He opined that “I think the whole vetting process look too artificial, the artificial answers they are giving tell me that someone is being evasive because the contract terms are bad and they don’t want anybody to know about it.

“Those responsible are surely behind making sure that nobody gets to knows where the contract is but assuming Ghana is your father’s property and you opened up employment to employ people and these guys(nominees) appear for the interview and background checks show that in their previous employment, they held certain positions, assigned with certain responsibilities pertaining to their jobs and the role they played they seem not to know anything about what happened, will you be in a better position to employ such people?

“So that is the question we should be asking ourselves and people should be held accountable for their stewardship, so if what we seeing at the vetting is a form of accountability, the country has been duped for all these years”.

He added “In the midst of all this is political funding, you could realize one after the other everybody come and they say: I don’t know, right from the National Security Minister who doesn’t know who gave the instruction for the invasion of parliament, to the Minister of Defense who haven’t seen the video of people being shot at in Techiman South and all the ministers we’ve heard. For me, one thing is clear, these answers have been rehearsed before they got to the vetting, and even though those in charge of vetting have asked the right question, everybody is been evasive, it’s a disappointment and not something we should adhere to.

“Even so many things are happening in the area of galamsey that even our uncle, Frimpong Boateng who is well known across the globe, his image has been dented, please! We are not doing something right, we don’t need a soothsayer to tell us it is wrong, let us rise up to the occasion of serving our people because service is what we have put ourselves up to, everything we do in this country is shrouded in secrecy and there’s so much ambiguity, that is why we are seeing the level of fraud we are observing, otherwise in those systems in the UK where there is a high level of accountability, anybody could be dragged to the Serious Fraud Office or dragged to the Central Bank or dragged to anywhere and you have to provide answers, you cannot appear and seem not to have answers and you’ll go through” he fumed.