Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw
Owusu
Friday, April
22, 2016
Former Youth and Sports Minister,
Mallam Ali Yusif Issah, who was jailed for stealing during the Kufuor administration,
is up in arms against the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive, Kojo Bonsu, for
claiming that he (former minister) stole $46,000 belonging to the state.
Kojo Bonsu claimed on Starr FM on Wednesday that Mallam Issah kept
the $46,000 which was to be used to pay the winning bonuses of the senior
national team, the Black Stars, after a match in Sudan in 2001 but turned
around to pretend that the huge sum of money had been stolen.
The utterance, which caught
Mallam Issah flat-footed, has pitched the two NDC chieftains to lock horns in
an acrimonious battle about to start.
The Kumasi mayor, who was a
representative of Adidas, then kit sponsors of the Black Stars, and member of
the delegation that took the team to Sudan where Ghana lost 1:0, said when it
was time for the players to receive their bonuses, Mallam Issah kept changing his
story about where the money was.
“When we asked him (Mallam Issah), he said he
left the money on his wife’s table…So every minute he would change the story… At
one time he told me, Cudjoe Fianoo and the late Mr Owusu Ansah that the money
was in Ghana and there was no cause for alarm,” he claimed.
Mr Kojo Bonsu averred, “But
unfortunately, his suitcase never came and so he didn’t have any clothes and I
took my credit card and I took him out and shopped for him…but the man was not
telling us the truth. One minute he says it is there, another minute he says it
was in his suitcase…and I found it very strange.
“I think that the money was with
him...; the money was with him. Wherever the money went he knows it but I don’t
think it was a set-up or a plan. He had the money so he knows better than
anybody.”
Kojo Bonsu’s assertion has
incensed Mallam Issah, who was brought from the People’s National Convention
(PNC) by President John Agyekum Kufuor to hold a ministerial position. He has
vowed to sue the mayor for defamation.
Mallam Issah has since defected
to the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and even contested the NDC parliamentary
primary at the Adentan Constituency. He reacted angrily, describing Kojo
Bonsu’s claim as “shocking” and a “fabrication.”
He is even calling on President
Mahama to immediately dismiss the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive for
contradicting his statement in court 15 years ago.
“I am at a loss. Kojo Bonsu has
added a typical lie to it. There was no time that my wife was called and asked
that I said I had left the money in the house… He was one of the prosecution witnesses
and he had all the time on earth to tell Ghanaians this.
“What Kojo Bonsu is telling
Ghanaians and everybody is that he is a liar… because he is giving a different
account. I want him sacked because a mayor is equivalent to a deputy minister
and he must be sacked for lying in court. What Kojo Bonsu has said is that he
is a liar,” he said.
Mallam Issah received a four-year
jail term in 2001 for stealing and was granted a presidential pardon in July
2003 on grounds of failing health.
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