Ace Investigative Journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has weighed in on rumors of cash compensation to approve the president’s minister nominees at the vetting committee.
The rumor on cash compensation for ministerial appointment approvals was recently started by political activist, Oliver Barker-Vormawor on both his Facebook and X handles.
“So all the monies the ministerial appointees are being made to pay to the Appointments Committee just to get approved, are those ones not affected by ORAL. Strange Republic,” he wrote at 9pm on January 24, 2025
Following his post, the appointment committee sent an invite to the activist to substantiate his claims.
A post shared by Journalist Awuni on X, has expressed that he has had confirmation from some top officials in parliament regarding the receival of cash paid from the office of the presidency during vetting of ministerial nominees.
According to him, the information which was confirmed by the immediate past First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu and the former NDC’s Minority Chief Whip, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka could be found in his book “The President Ghana Never Got.”
“In “The President Ghana Never Got,” the immediate past First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu and the former NDC’s Minority Chief Whip, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, confirmed to me that the Appointments Committee of Parliament routinely received cash payment from the Office of the President during vetting of ministerial nominees,” he wrote.
However, he explained that cash payment was usually done to “provide a level playing ground for nominees who could not pay.”
“That practice started in 2009 and had remained. (I’m yet to know if that’s happening in the current vetting). The committee members took the weekly payments from the Jubilee House even though they were officially paid by parliament for their time on the vetting committee,” he added.
Furthermore, “the Deputy Speaker also told me in the recorded interview I had before writing the book that some nominees often wanted to pay money through him and when he told them it wasn’t required, they didn’t believe him,” he revealed.
Find post here: https://twitter.com/Manasseh_Azure/status/1884540810319782348
Thank you for reading from Dehotpress, a Ghanaian news website. You are welcome to share this story on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., and you can also follow us there.
Discussion about this post