Mahama Ayariga - Youth and Sports Minister
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, February 12, 2015
In what can pass as open display of arrogance Youth
and Sports Minister Mahama Ayariga shocked many on radio yesterday when he said
he will not disclose the budget of the senior national team, the Black Stars
for participating in the just-ended African Cup of Nations (AFCON 2015)
tournament in Equatorial Guinea.
“I refused to discuss the budget before the
tournament because it was going to distract the team’s preparations. I don’t
report to you. I report to the Auditor-General, I report to Parliament,” he
boasted on Peace FM in Accra.
Reviewing the team’s participation in the AFCON 2015
with popular morning show host Kwami Sefa-Kayi, the minster sounded flippant
and snobbish throughout the interview.
Mahama Ayariga who is also an MP later in the day
went to Parliament to present what was thought to be the budget for the team’s
participation.
He told Parliament that the government spent GH¢18.5
on the Black Stars but interestingly Cote d’Ivoire which won the tournament
beating Ghana 9-8 on penalties on Sunday got a prize cash of $1.5 million from
the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
No
questions
In the radio telephone interview, Mahama Ayariga who
was an active member of the defunct Committee for Joint Action (CJA) that
constantly pressurized the erstwhile NPP government for accountability, did not
understand why the taxpayer should question the Ghana National Petroleum
Corporation’s (GNPC’s) dolling out of hard-earned cash to the team.
The GNPC which is solely state-owned with a core
mandate of oil exploration and as main sponsor of the national team paid a
whooping $575,000 to the players with each receiving $25,000 when they arrived
on Monday from Malabo where the team placed second in the tournament.
Public
Concerns
Critics are of the view that the country is
currently facing serious energy crisis and as a key player in the sector, the
GNPC was expected to help solve some of the problems rather than get involved
in ‘extraneous’ issues.
“The GNPC can decide what they will do as part of
effort to promote their corporate image and to support the Black Stars and
other causes and I think that we should stop that habit of wanting to destroy
the reputation of companies that move in to support the Black Stars,” Mahama
Ayariga said.
President
in the dark
“In fact the President didn’t even know that the
GNPC was giving the players any money until when he was speaking and I gave him
a note at the breakfast meeting with the players. It was only then that he got
to know that the GNPC was giving that bonus to the players.
The President didn’t know. It was there in the hall
that I informed him that your Excellency, GNPC has decided to give a bonus to
the players and he asked me if he could mention it to the audience and I said
yes! GNPC’s team was in the room.”
He said “the President has nothing to do with it. If
you think that it is the President who is coercing GNPC to give out the money.
He didn’t even know…GNPC money is company that has been formed by the government
and they have chosen to support the Black Stars and I commend them highly for
supporting the team.”
Travelling
fans
Mahama Ayariga claimed he could not be bothered
about how fans airlifted to Equatorial Guinea fared because he did not care.
“Why should I be bothered about Ghanaians in Equatorial
Guinea. I can choose what questions to ask and what information I am interested
in. You cannot force me to decide what information I want to know and what I
don’t want to.”
He rather asked the host of the radio programme to
“go round asking who took the supporters there,” adding “I was
concentrating on work. I was only
helping people who were coming because they were Ghanaians.”
He said the ministry did not sponsor fans to the tournament
contrary to a statement by his deputy Vincent Oppong Asamoah that the ministry
facilitated for fans to get the tournament saying “I didn’t send supports to Equatorial
Guinea so go looking for who sent them there.”
Unpatriotism
“On the
contrary, I feel sad that you want the conversation to be about who sent
supporters. I thought that you will happy that our footballers went sacrificed,
exhibited great determination, team spirit and did the things they did and that
if you had the opportunity, you would also come and watch them.”
“I don’t think that you want to bastardize those who
made an effort to get to the place to come and support the team.
“I thought that would be the concentration now. What
lesson do we learn from the determination of these young boys. I thought that
with this useful airtime that you have that would be the focus.”
“I have been upset with some of you (media
personalities) because right from day one you have tried to distract us from
focusing on what will happen in EG in terms of our participation in the tournament
but we refused to be distracted. We focused on what we were going there to do.”
Minister’s
Itinerary
Mahama Ayariga was accused of staying with the team
throughout the tournament and ignoring other pressing issues back home but he
denied the claim.
“I wasn’t in Equatorial Guinea throughout. I
actually was not there for the first match when Ghana lost to Senegal. I was on
my hospital bed in Accra and watched the match from there,” he claimed.
“I had to drive from Accra to Lome to catch a flight
to Malabo and to Bata and by road to Mongomo and got there just before the
second match (Algeria game) spoke to them and to try and encourage them to win
the match.”
Good
luck!
He claimed that “immediately after the match, the
following morning I was packing to come back to Accra when the boys said they
will not let me go. They would want me to stay with them.”
“They said Oh! You brought us luck so how can you go
back? So I stayed back and they even gave me one of their rooms to stay with
them because I had no accommodation.”
He said he spent time with the team for the
preliminary stages “but after that I came back to Accra and when they were
starting the quarter finals, I went back to Malabo to try and encourage them.”
“I was there for the quarter and semi finals and I
came back to Accra. It is just one hour thirty minutes flight. I went back on
Saturday, the day before the finals. The reason for the back-and-forth was
because it was a very short flight.”
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