The Minority Chief Whip has come hard on his colleague Minority Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, portraying the latter as a liar with respect to a bribery scandal involving the Energy Minister.
Mr. Ayariga has insisted on several media platforms that, then a nominee, Mr. Boakye Agyarko, offered members of the Minority on Parliament’s Appointment Committee 3,000 cedis each. The money was meant to influence them to unanimously approve his nomination as the Energy Minister.
“I will stand by this fact wherever I go. Hon Muntaka told us that the chairman told him the money is coming from Boakye Agyarko, and we said no we are not interested” and returned the money, he insisted on TV3’s New Day Saturday.
But Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mohammed Mubarak has denied the claim and wondered who fed the Bawku Central MP with that information.
“I never gave Ayariga anything and I claimed it is coming from Joe Osei Owusu (Chairman of the Appointments Committee)…Osei Owusu has never discussed any money issue with me,” he stated emphatically on Joy FM’s Newsfile Saturday.
He also maintained that nobody in the Minority was given money purported to have come from Boakye Agyarko.
Muntaka believes the issue should not be treated lightly.
“The leadership would have to take this thing up seriously,” he asserted. “I don’t know where Ayariga is having this information from.”
He however curiously disclosed that “We had several meetings, and before we started, we ourselves had agreed, in principle, that we are not going to take a dime from anybody”.
When host of Newsfile wanted a better understanding of what he meant by they never took a dime, the phone of Minority Chief Whip, who said he was on his way to Koforidua in the Eastern Region for a meeting, went off.
Nonetheless, he had early on, stressed, “I am saying that Ayariga is a Muslim and I am a Muslim, and I am saying that Ayariga never, never spoke the truth.”
Meanwhile, Parliament’s Public Relations Directorate has issued a statement condemning the allegation by Mr. Ayariga, asking that it should be discarded.
Mr. Boakye Agyarko himself has told TV3 the MP was spreading lies about him, claiming he never gave money to any Member of Parliament. He suspects the claim was to score political point after he levelled various corruption allegations against the NDC government.
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READ ALSO: Parliament: I stand by my story; Agyarko ‘bribed’ us – Ayariga
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By Isaac Essel |3news.com|Ghana