NPP-USA Demands Apology from Mahama Ayariga

NPP-USA takes a very serious exception to the ignorance-fueled display of arrogance by the ignoble minister of Youth and Sports Mahama Ayariga. The minister who is also the member of Parliament for Bawku Central last week insulted members of the media whose only sin was to perform their duty as members of the fourth arm of the government. Responding to questions about details of the expense report (not the budget) for the just ended AFCON Tournament, the not-so-sophisticated Ayariga retorted that Journalists were asking "useless questions."

What is even more unfortunate is that 24 hours after the unsurprising unguarded vituperation, when given the opportunity to make amends, Ayariga refused to apologize and worsened the insult. "I don't regret anything I said. I meant all what I said. I would repeat them when he questions me that way again this afternoon. If he questions my integrity as a Minister then, I have the right to question his professionalism as a journalist", he said.

NPP-USA wants to make it clear to the "dishonorable" Minister that he indeed is accountable to the citizens whose taxes pay his salary and funds the activities of his ministry including the AFCON tournament. When he has finally been able to sweat and create his personal wealth, then he can spend it as he pleases. But as long as he is spending taxpayers' money, the journalists will perform their duty and ask pertinent questions even if they appear "useless" to the minister's limited level of understanding.

Due to ineptitude, President Mahama may have created the impression to him that he could insult the Ghanaian people with impunity, but we will take him to task and remind him that it was the minister himself who created the mystery surrounding the AFCON budget that precipitated the higher level of public interest. Had he formally presented a budget BEFORE the tournament like normal public officials do, he may not have had to confront the barrage of questions.

NPP-USA calls on Ayariga to immediately apologize and retract his comments. We further hope that he will learn from this unfortunate episode and present a budget for all future events BEFORE those events and not present an expense report AFTER those events. We wish also to lay a larger portion of the blame on president Mahama for not only condoning such crass behavior from his ministers, but setting the wrong example.

You may recall that leading up to the 2012 elections, Mahama presided over two quarters during which almost all ministries as well as the presidency overspent their Parliament-approved budgetary allocations by almost GHC2 billion without the courtesy of presenting a formal request to Parliament for additional spending. NPP-USA is of the belief that Maham Ayariga largely drew his inspirations from that era.

In all this, however, the Ghanaian people especially civil society and the clergy is to blame. During the coup d'etat era, military governments used the gun to foster a culture of silence because understandably no one wanted to lose his or her life. But today we have all been insulted back into another culture of silence. The clergy and civil society have largely given this Mahama administration a pass because of the fear of being insulted by NDC party activists and government officials. NPP-USA believes the fear of insults is not an excuse to allow our country to be run down and off the cliff.

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