Parliament Must Purge Itself Of Ayariga’s Bribery Allegation

Ebo Quansah in Accra Parliament has a huge image dent to deal with, following the exposè by Mr. Mahama Ayariga, Member for Bawku Central, that Mr. Boakye Agyarko, the newly-approved Minister of Energy, attempted to bribe members of the Minority side on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee, seeking approval. The former Minister for Environment, Science and […]

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Ebo Quansah in Accra

Parliament has a huge image dent to deal with, following the exposè by Mr. Mahama Ayariga, Member for Bawku Central, that Mr. Boakye Agyarko, the newly-approved Minister of Energy, attempted to bribe members of the Minority side on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee, seeking approval.

The former Minister for Environment, Science and Innovation told Radio Gold, an Accra-based radio station, well-known for its anti-government rhetoric, that each member of the minority on the Appointment Committee received a handsome gift of GH¢3,000 from the new minister. According to Mr. Ayariga, some of them returned the booty when it was discovered that the ‘blood’ money was intended to influence them in the proceedings.

Mr. Ayariga further claimed that the monies were received from Minority Chief Whip, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, who, in turn, had received the cash from the Chairman of the Appointments Committee, First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei Owusu. Incidentally, both Mr. Osei Owusu and Mr. Muntaka have dismissed the allegation as a figment of the imagination of the Bawku Central MP. The allegation though, would not go away.

A number of minority MPs have joined in the crusade, buoyed by their determination to pay the new Energy Minister in his own coin. Mr. Boakye Agyarko had alleged before the committee that the administration of former President John Dramani Mahama was riddled with corruption. He cited a number of International Monetary Fund dealings with this country, which, in his considered opinion, could be tainted.

At the time of writing this piece yesterday, two members on the Minority side, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongu, and Mr. Alhassan Suhuyini, MP for Tamale North, have joined Mr. Ayariga to ask the Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Aaron Oquaye, to open a Parliamentary enquiry into the bribery allegation.

There are a number of difficulties with the allegation in the first place. The Minority Chief Whip, who is alleged to have collected the money from the Chairman of the committee for onward transmission to other members, has sworn by the Muslim Holy Book -the Koran- that he has never given any money to Mr. Ayariga, neither has he ever collected any money from the Chairman of the Committee.

For quite a while, both leaders in the House have kept a dignified silence.

The Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Majority Leader and his Minority counterpart, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, have kept mute over the affair. The banter on the airwaves over the matter though, is affecting the dignity of the House. It brings back memories of bribery allegations over the years against its members.

When former President John Agyekum Kufuor sat at the Castle, allegations flew about members of Parliament having been compromised before approving the sale of Ghana Telecom. The then New Patriotic Party Member for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa, P. C. Appiah-Ofori, led the chorus embarrassing his own administration over the allegation.

As the general public waited with bated breath for an enquiry into the allegation, the whole episode fizzled out, after much hot air had been blown over radio and television. In the last Parliamentary session, Mr. Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin raised the controversy over bribery allegations in the House to the roof-tops, when he told a Parliamentary sub-committee seminar at Koforidua the other day, that the Parliamentary process is riddled with bribery allegations.

The member, who has been in Parliament longer than any Ghanaian, dead or alive, mentioned the initiation of bills particularly, as the most bribery-prone area in the House. Mr. Bagbin claimed that companies which ask for bills, as a protection in their trade, were allegedly made to pay through their noses.

It is not too long ago, when Citizen Vigilante Martin Amidu issued a statement indicting the Fifth and Sixth Parliaments of corruption. Read the lips of the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice: “The partisanship, cronyism, patronage, ethnicity and endemic corruption of the former governments of the Fifth and Sixth Parliaments of the Fourth Republic has been allowed by the majority to infect the fabric and conduct of legislative business in the House.

“Corruption became endemically pervasive in the Fifth and Sixth Parliaments because of the deliberate acts of infection by the President and government. Nobody better explains and articulates the purposeful and deliberate collusion between the Fifth and Sixth Parliaments and the Executives under the Fourth Republican Constitution to set the Constitution asunder, than its Minority Leader, the Honourable Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, on 6^th January 2017.

“He confirmed the majority and patriotic beliefs of citizens that the majority of the Fifth and Sixth Parliaments kowtowed to the looter governments of epoch, in such a way that due diligence was not done in the passage and approval of loans and international agreements, which were usually passed with alacrity.”

It is not a trait that was observed yesterday. It has been a worrying trend since the advent of the Fourth Republic. The committee sessions particularly, have been the most juicy spheres of operation in Parliamentary work. I was once told by a Minister of Finance that before budgetary allocations would be approved in the house, huge outlays of money would have to be disbursed to members, especially those on the minority side, as a means of softening the grounds for approval of the various budgetary allocations.

Allegations of bribery would not go away in spite of spirited defense from the leadership. That is why it would be in their interest of the House and its 275 members to investigate the allegations currently doing the rounds.

I am not a fan of Mr. Mahama Ayariga.  He is not my perfect example of a House intent on building consensus. In my opinion, the MP for Bawku Central tends to play the partisan card on too many occasions. As he himself alluded to in his exposè on Radio Gold, Mr. Ayariga and his colleagues were motivated more by the desire to pay the new Energy Minister in his own coin, following the allegation of corruption he made about the President and his administration when he appeared before the Vetting Committee.

In effect, the hullabaloo on radio, which has resulted in a huge outcry, might owe its genesis to the desire to pay Mr. Agyarko back in his own coin. As the working day meandered to an end yesterday, it emerged that Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu has joined the bandwagon, asking for a full scale investigation into the rumpus. Looking at the nature of what Flt Lt. Jerry Rawlings fondly referred to as ‘Babies with Sharp Teeth’ queuing behind Mr. Ayariga’s allegation, I have no qualms in my assertion that political consideration might be a major contributory factor to the flying about of the allegation than the need to clean the Parliamentary stable.

All the same, I believe Mr. Ayariga’s exposè gives the Honourable House a golden opportunity for an introspection and the tool to use to clear the image of the Second Estate in our democratic evolution.

In my humble opinion, a thorough examination of the issue would empower Parliament to arm itself with the tool to deal with major scandals that come before it.

I believe, for instance, that Parliament would have had the courage to delve into the bribery allegation involving one Guarzo, a security capo of late Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, and the President of Ghana in the First and Second Parliaments of the Fourth Republic. I do not believe the Speaker at the time, the late Mr. Daniel Francis Annan, would have waived the call for inquiry aside, if Parliament had dealt with its own image problems at the time.

Parliament needs to arm itself to deal with more controversial national issues. It has to, first of all, convince Ghanaians that it has purged itself of the corruption dent.

I shall return!

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