Pelpuo: There's no mafia at Sports Ministry

Minister of State in charge of Private Sector Development, Dr Abdul Rashid Pelpuo, has said there is no mafia at the Ministry of Youth and Sports as widely speculated.

"…I do not think there is anything called mafia at the sports authority," he told Ekow Mensah Shalders on the Executive Breakfast Show on Class 91.3fm Tuesday December 29, 2015.

The Sports Ministry has seen many Ministers come and go within a short period, a situation, which some pundits and critics have put down to the existence of a mafia whose stranglehold on affairs at the Ministry is unshakable.

Dr Pelpuo said the problem with the Ministry is that people are too anxious about sports.

According to him, "there is too much talk about who is managing the Black Stars, who shouldn’t be managing it, who the coaches are, how the coach is engaged, how much the Black Stars spend when they go to play at tournaments, and sometimes, the mistakes made when flying monies to a team are made public."

During his time at the Ministry, Dr Pelpuo said did many things to make footballers and fans happy by flying money, too, but it was never made public, so, it was never known.

"I can tell you the many things I have done to make the Black Stars happy. Nobody will hear it and I won’t tell anybody but it was to motivate the people and to get us to win the matches," he said.

The Wa Central legislator disclosed that as a Minister of Sports, the first thing he did was to meet with all stakeholders and announce that: 'I don’t believe in mafia. I believe in a Ghanaian, who is working hard and that I want to see everybody’s hands on deck'. "And, so, we all got committed into making sure that the right things were done."

Ghana won the Africa and World U-20 Cups in 2009 during his time as the Minister of Youth and Sports.