Cash used for ‘needless’ Assin North election could’ve paid NABCo trainees – Basintale

A deputy national communication officer of the NDC, Malik Basintale says the governing NPP needs to apologise to Ghanaians for misusing state resources to organise the Assin North by-elections last month.

Arguing that the exercise was needless, the politician indicated that the court case that triggered the by-election could have been halted since details were clear that the MP in question, James Gyakye Quayson, had renounced his Canadian citizenship before he was elected in December 2020.

Speaking to Kwame Minkah on Dwaboase on TV XYZ, Basintale noted the government could have discontinued the Gyakye Quayson case to avert a by-election which cost the state millions of cedis.

The election which took place on June 27 resulted in the victory of James Gyakye Quayson, the candidate from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), beating his main contender, Charles Opoku, from the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The government has been accused of vote-buying by the opposition NDC and some civil society organisations following interviews journalists conducted with some residents of Assin Breku, the district capital, where the acts of vote-buying took centre stage.

Basintale believes the huge sums of monies used to influence voters in Assin North could have been used to pay NABCo trainees whom the Akufo-Addo government owe millions of cedis.

“The funds could have been used to settle the debt owed school feeding caterers who have been agitating recently,” he fumed.