Bawku Central MP has been boxed into a corner after making allegations that his colleagues in the NDC were given 3,000 to buy approval of the Energy Minister.
A claim which, history shows, sets the claimant up in a me-against-the-world style.
Holding the attention of listeners on Newsfile Saturday for 30 minutes, the Bawku Central MP stepped into the witness box of an invisible court of public opinion to tell his story.
‘What I said on Radio Gold was factual, facts, absolute facts’, he said and proceeded to reveal what went on in an in-camera meeting of MPs on the committee which vets minister-designates, the Appointments Committee.
The Appointments Committee chair Joe Osei Owusu: Why did you put out the information there that Agyarko had given money to him to give to us.
Ayariga: Well, you said John Mahama is corrupt so your corruption should be out there.
Joe Osei Owusu: So it is equalisation?
(Then everybody in the room laughed) This is the drama according to Mahama Ayariga. He rejects claims by Joe Osei Owusu, he retracted the allegation because it was intended to equalise.
Listen to Ayariga’s interview
He mentioned three names in his version of events. Apart from the Energy minister, Joe Osei Owusu, the Bawku Central MP added one of his own leaders, the Minority Chief Whip Muntaka Mubarak.
Everyone of them has spoken. They are all unhappy and they have all denied.
It began with newly-approved Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko. “First of all I feel saddened that allegation was made without the fear of equivocation…it is totally false,” he said, adding “I have not offered any money or gone to anybody to offer to members of Parliament to make a decision in my favor.”
It was followed by First Deputy Speaker of Parliament Joe Osei Owusu who is chairman of the Parliament’s Appointment Committee.
Joe Osei Owusu has hinted he will sue Bawku Central MP Mahama Ayariga who has cited him in a bribery allegation. Taking his turn to respond to the allegations, the Committee chairman has also stated emphatically, the story is a fabrication.
“Mahama Ayariga who is making that allegation… he knows that he is lying. He is lying and he knows that” the Appointment Committee chairman told Joy FM/MultiTV’s news analysis programme Newsfile Saturday.
“Let me make it clear, I have never received any money from Agyarko, I have never handed any money to Muntaka” he stressed.
Listen to Joe Osei Owusu
Two of the three men in the center of this controversy – Boakye Agyarko and Joe Osei Owusu – want to go to court and the third, Alhaji Muntaka, has sworn by Allah that the story is not true urging a Parliamentary inquiry.
The Minority Chief Whip told Samson Anyenini Lardy, host of Newsfile that he gave no money to Mr Ayariga, challenging him to provide evidence.
” I am saying this with a lot of difficulty…..I am a Muslim and Ayariga is a Muslim, I am swearing by the Allah that has created he and I, I never gave Ayariga anything and I said it was coming from Joe Osei Owusu and [Osei Owusu] has never discussed any money issue with me and …I have never given any Ayariga any money, saying that it is coming from the Chairman.
Listen to Muntaka:
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