Dan Kwaku Yeboah defends $6m AFCON budget

Ace Sports Journalist, and spokesperson of the Normalisation Committee, Dan Kwaku Yeboah has jumped to the defense of the Sports Ministry claiming that the $6.5m AFCON budget presented by the sector minister to the Parliament of Ghana is one of the smallest in recent years.

An outspoken Kwaku Yeboah who is known to be an advocate against malfeasance in Ghanaian football could not help but jump to the defense of the Sports Minister, Isaac Asiamah, when he appeared on the ‘Krokroko show’ on Peace FM, stating that simple mathematics cannot account for Ghana’s expenditure at the tournament.

“We have to criticize some of the things, but the truth also is that this is one of the smallest budget we’ve taken to the AFCON in recent history yet it looks huge looking at our circumstance as a country,” Dan Kweku Yeboah emphasized.

He went on to explain that, “When you take a look at the budget that came out, people made simple mathematical assumptions. For instance people claimed that CAF provided accommodation forgetting that the team camped in Dubai for 3 weeks but CAF didn’t pay for that, we even took transport for training morning and evening in Dubai.”

“Some have even argued that the money we saved couldn’t have cater for the rest of the tournament but it’s false because it could have paid the rest of the bonuses if the team had progressed,” he added.

Ghana’s AFCON Budget Facts

However, historical checks by Ghanaweb.com dating back to 2012 indicates that no government has ever budgeted for an amount totalling up to $6 million for AFCON. In 2012 the GFA presented an $8 million budget to the John Mahama government which was later slashed to $5.5m.

At the 2015 AFCON in Equatorial Guinea where Ghana reached the final, the previous government spent $5.8 million which is the closest.

Under the leadership of Nii Lante Vanderpuye he led the state to approve a $3.8m budget for the 2017 AFCON before the NDC left government. The 2019 AFCON $6 million budget is the first budget approved by parliament since the new government assumed office.