The Ashnati Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, has described former President John Mahama as “unclean man” who is “infectiously corrupt.”
Chairman Wontumi was speaking in an interview on Metro TV with host Paul Adom-Otchere about the Airbus SE bribery scandal which has courted an embarrassment for Ghana’s image on a global scale as well as issue of galamsey, where he is believed to be involved, and how he is handling the affairs of the NPP in the Ashanti Region.
According to him, the flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has got himself “dirty” with corruption that the mere mention of the word evokes memories of the Burkina Faso’s Ford gift saga and other scandals that rocked his government.
In September 2016, the Commission of Human Rights & Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) disclosed that ex-President Mahama breached the country’s gift policy in accepting the controversial Ford gift given to him by a Burkinabe contractor, Djibril Kanazoe.
“John Mahama’s bottom is dirty when it comes to discussions on corruption… It is not clean. Corruption has infected him like the coronavirus,” Wontumi fired.
He continued that the coronavirus tag perfectly fits former Mr. Mahama as he soiled his hands during his reign as president, and said the former Ghana leader could not answer a straightforward question on corruption posed to him in a BBC interview.
For him, the airbus scandal has caused huge embarrassment for the nation to the extent that Ghanaians living outside the country now feel embarrassed.
The NPP chairman again stated that the scandal has also courted bad name for Ghana to the extent that the Bretton Woods Institutions may feel reluctant to give the nation support.
He reiterated his party’s position that the said ‘Government Official 1’ and ‘Intermediary 5’, as the UK High Court described in its ruling in the aerospace manufacturer’s corrupt deals, were former President John Mahama and his brother Samuel Mahama.
Apart from the Airbus scandal, Chairman Wontumi talked about how he was making so much money through his mining company Hansol Mining Limited and how the company’s excavators were destroyed by the Mahama administration.
He claimed that at some point, Mr. Mahama arranged for a meeting with him because reports had reached him that he (Wontumi) was engaging in illegal mining.
He also said the then President Mahama realised how smart he was and even tried to persuade him to join the NDC, but he refused.
“I told him mining is not a bad thing. Every country needs mining, if you have resources, you need it to develop your country… but you have to regularise it or make a good policy for it. But to me, I have a legitimate licence they have signed for me. This is my licence, so he sees everything true (sic).
“Then he said, oh this guy you are too smart, because that time I was making about one million dollars a day,” Chairman Wontumi claimed.
He said that it was because he refused to be part of the NDC that was why he was targeted.
NPP & Mining
Chairman Wontumi also said that he did not have any illegal concession as being claimed and added that “me, I have suffered. If we are talking about somebody who has suffered in mining, it is me.”