Outspoken private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu has alleged that the Member of Parliament for Abetifi, Bryan Acheampong was a financier of the about 98 New Patriotic Party MPs who wanted Ken Ofori-Atta out of government.
According to the lawyer, there is a National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) report confirming his allegation.
The governing NPP MPs led by Asante-Akim North Constituency legislator, Andy Kwame Appiah-Kubi, had accused the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta of plunging the country into a deep financial and economic crisis.
They however backed dawn on their demand for the president to sack Mr. Ofori-Atta who is a cousin of President Akufo-Addo.
This was after series of meetings with the president and top echelon of the party asking them to exercise restraint to allow Mr. Ofori-Atta to conclude Ghana’s deal with the International Monetary Fund.
Contributing to a discussion on the approval of the six ministerial nominees by parliament on TV3’s The Key Points, Saturday, lawyer Martin Kpebu suggested that because Mr. Bryan Acheampong was a leading financier of the MPs who demanded Ofori-Atta’s removal, the president “co-opted him with a ministerial position” in order to “quash” him.
“Bryan Acheampong was one of the sponsors of the 98 MPs…Bryan Acheampong is said to be the one sponsoring, sponsoring…Brayna Acheampong is in there as a minister because he was the main force behind the 98 MPs. Isn’t his hotel that they were meeting? Even the NIB has a report on it,” he claimed.
Though the Newstitbits.com cannot independently verify his wild claims, Mr. Kpebu threatened that if push comes to shove “the report would be leaked” and warned his co-panelist Richard Ahiagbah who is the Communications Director of the NPP not to dare him.
“If you are to give me too much heat, you know how the system works, NIB will leak the report, so don’t try it…so they will tell you how Bryan Acheampong was behind the 98 MPs,” he blurted out when challenged on the programme.
Mr. Ahiagbah had denied knowledge of Bryan Acheampong being the financier of those NPP MPs and also placed on record that he had no knowledge of the existence of such report.
During the voting on Friday to approve or disapprove the six ministerial nominees, Bryan Acheampong got the highest votes.
Out of the 272 legislators that voted, Bryan had 167 YES votes; 98 NO votes; 4 rejected ballots; and 3 abstentions.
He is expected be sworn in as the Minister of Food and Agriculture by the president.