My mother doesn’t know the difference between corner kick and penalty – Afriyie Ankrah on wild Brazil World Cup allegations

Former Minister for Youth and Sports, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, has noted how several false allegations were made against him following Ghana’s participation in the 2014 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil.

Mr Afriyie Ankrah shared some of the outrageous allegations leveled against him with GhanaWeb's Edward Smith Anamale on the Election Desk program.

According to him, he was alleged to have put his mother in charge of the sale of replica jerseys, but stated that his mother had absolutely no knowledge of football.

"There were all manner of wild stories. I’d give you just a few. There’s this story that my wife was a caterer... I mean, my wife has absolutely nothing to do with cooking. The only reason she went was because we had buried her mother three weeks earlier. So, I took my wife and my two kids because the other one was in boarding school, and I bought the tickets myself – Air Portugal, and took them. It was not at government expense, but there was the story out there. They said my mother was in charge of replica jerseys. What they didn’t know is that my mother doesn’t live in Ghana; my mother has never lived in Ghana since I was six months old. She doesn’t know the difference between a corner kick and a penalty. She has no idea, so when I told her, ‘Mummy, they said you are in charge of replica jerseys, she said, what is that?’ "She has no idea," he said.

He shared other allegations made against him but expressed happiness about the report of the Dzamefe Commission, which, according to him, vindicated him.

"I woke up one day and there was one of the papers with me sitting with some ministers, with coconut in front of us. They said coconut was $200, $2000. There was nothing about coconut. I always drink coconut because I’m a health-conscious person, and at the camp, coconut was virtually free. And even if you buy it, it’s less than $1. Nothing; it was all manufactured."

"It was later that I found out that there were some unseen hands behind it, but I keep saying that if those things hadn't happened, and especially if the commission hadn't been put in place and a report officially there, which clearly shows that I was audited by Ernst and Young,... by the time I was leaving office, the World Cup money itself, which the government gave to us, was still in the account," Afriyie Ankrah, who is vying for

The 2014 World Cup in Brazil saw Ghana get eliminated at the group stage of the competition, but it also came with several camp-related stories, among other stories of corruption allegations.



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