A Deputy Communications Officer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Anthony Abayifa Karbo has declined calls on the party’s vice presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to apologise for ‘goofing’ on Ghana’s debts at the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Karbo said that Bawumia owes no one an apology and called the bluff of several government Ministers including Deputy Finance Minister, Cassiel Ato Forson and Communications Minister, Edward Omane-Boamah who have been asking for the apology.
“Dr. Bawumia has no liability of apology to anybody in this country or neither in the African Development Bank (AfDB) neither to Government of Ghana or those who are asking for that apology, that apology won’t come…,” he said.
Dr. Bawumia at a Lecture at the Central University College (CUC) on Tuesday stated that AfDB has blacklisted Ghana for non-payment of debts. The sanctions, he said meant that signature of new AfDB loan agreements, disbursement on all AfDB on-going projects and the granting of new loans have been suspended until the situation is resolved.
But the AfDB declined the claims of the former Bank of Ghana stating on its website.
"Our attention has been drawn to a press report that Ghana is under sanctions with the African Development Bank Group (AfDB)…we wish to state that Ghana is current on all its obligations with the AfDB. "Accordingly, Ghana is not on the list of countries under sanctions by the AfDB," the Bank said.
The Bank said that it erroneously put Ghana on its sanctions list in February this year but hurriedly effected a correction. "On 18 February 2015, due to an administrative oversight, Ghana was erroneously included in the list of countries under sanctions by the AfDB. However, the error was detected that same day and a corrected list was immediately issued in replacement," the Bank said.
The denial has attracted several attacks on the credibility of the NPP politician by his political opponents who arguing that he is no longer a credible source for data.
Karbo however stated that Dr. Bawumia only spoke from an internal memo of the Bank which circulated on the 17th February, 2015. Several African countries including Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Ghana were sanctioned in the internal memo which was quoted by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
Karbo therefore challenged Bawumia’s accusers to come out with superior analysis and documents to disprove Bawumia adding that ‘I expecting in the near future that Dr. Bawumia would be vindicated in the coming days.” “I am telling you, wait and see, very soon you will hear the vindication that would come out as a result of the things Bawumia has said…,” he said.
AfDB, he added was also not been truthful and insisted that the documents that Bawumia quoted from has nothing to do with administrative errors from the bank because the dates cited by Bawumia differs from that of the Bank. He argued that the AfDB might be doing a face-saving act for the Government of Ghana and Bawumia would have none of that since he quoted from a credible document.
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