Former President John Mahama’s reference to an agreement with the Akufo-Addo-led government over his intention to keep his official bungalow as a retirement package “cannot be totally false”, OccupyGhana member Sidney Casely-Hayford has said.
“Somewhere along the line some agreement must have been cut, something was negotiated. I can’t think that far that the president will write a letter referring to an agreement between him and the incoming president and it being totally false. There has to be some truth in it for him to make a reference to it,” he noted.
Mr Mahama had wanted his current bungalow as part of his retirement package but later wrote a letter to President Nana Akufo-Addo to withdraw his interest.
While the outgone government’s side of the transition team said it reached an agreement with the new president’s team to remain there, the new government said there was no such deal.
But Mr Casely-Hayford, who was a guest on Citi FM’s The Big Issue, argued that there is “some connivance and there is a point where we are not being told the whole truth about the matter”.
He maintained: “Government is withholding the truth because of repercussions. It just does not make any logical sense that President Mahama, despite everything that I say about him, would sit down and forge an agreement and refer to an agreement that never existed and then say he is withdrawing his request.”
He was of the view that government’s side “might have felt the backlash after the story broke out particularly on social media and how people were thinking about this whole issue, they (government) decided to do a U–turn”, adding: “They had to figure a way to cover it and not make it happen.”
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