Bribery scandal: It’s AG's job to probe allegation – Ayariga

Bawku Central MP Mahama Ayariga has stated that it is the responsibility of the Attorney General to investigate and proceed with any legal action on the alleged bribery scandal in parliament.

“That is the Attorney General’s job now. I have just given the facts as I know, anybody who calls me anywhere these are the facts that I know…facts are facts and that is what I can swear on oath and state and I am willing to do that before anybody,” he told Umaru Sandah on ‘The Big Issue’ on Saturday, January 28.

This was after he was asked if he would take legal action about his claims of being bribed by Energy Minister-designate Boakye Agyarko, an action that contravenes Ghana’s laws.

Mr Ayariga had alleged that a quantum of money was given to the chairman of parliament’s Appointments Committee, Joe Osei Owusu, by Mr Agyarko to be distributed to Minority MPs on the committee with the intention of influencing them to give him the nod so he could be sworn in as Minister.

Mr Ayariga, who is a member of the Committee, told Radio Gold in an interview on Friday 27 January that the Minority MPs outrightly rejected the GHS3000 each, which was enveloped for them when they later found out from Mr Osei Owusu that the money was coming from Mr Agyarko.

According to Mr Ayariga, the Minority MPs first accepted the money because they were under the impression that the money was their sitting allowance but got alarmed and decided to return the money after they heard rumours that the money was coming from Mr Agyarko to bribe them.

“We were expecting our committee allowances from the chairman so when we were called by our leader to come and take our money we took it knowing that that is our allowance.

So, as for the quantum, we cannot tell how much money he might have given to the chairman, so there are all sorts of speculations about what sort of quantum he is alleged to have given but what we know is what came to us as individuals, that is what we can bear testimony to: whether it’s GHS1 or GHS2, no matter how small it is, what we know is what was given to us and we found out later that it was coming from him so as for the quantum, it’s not important.

For me, the most important thing is that we were expecting to be given our committee sitting allowances, and we were promised by our chairman that it would come very soon, and we were called to pick up money from our Whip, we picked it up and assumed that it was our allowances and then later we heard rumours in the house and we called our leader and asked him where is the money coming from, he said it came from the Chairman but chairman said it was coming from Boakye Agyarko so that is where we realised that we [couldn’t] take money from Boakye Agyarko. So we asked him to take his money back, we are not interested. The quantum is insignificant, even if he had brought GHS1million, we will still return it to him,” Mr Ayariga said.