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The Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, Mr. Vincent Oppong Asamoah has stated that Ghanaian midfielder Andre Dede Ayew or Ivorian Yaya Toure either deserved the Africa Player of the Year (APOTY) award.

The award ceremony held in Abuja, Nigeria on Thursday saw the Gabonese international and Borussia Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang shrugged off a stiff competition from the four time winner Toure and Swansea’s Ayew to lift the coveted award.

The Gabon forward emerged winner with 143 points to Toure’s 136 and Swansea’s Ayew finishing third with 112 points.

However, the Deputy Sports Minister expressed shock to the GNA Sports that, assessing the performance of Toure and Ayew at club level and when on national duty, the duo appears favorites to merit the honor as compared to Aubameyang.

He stated that, it’s unfortunate to award a player based on his performance at club level adding that Africa doesn’t value their own.

He said ‘‘to me, if you look at the last AFCON, its unfortunate when you are assessing the performance of players, usually it’s based on how they fare in Europe. It looks as if Africa we don’t even put value in our own league in the continent and especially we don’t look at our national teams in the continent because seriously speaking, if you look at the performance of the various teams in the last AFCON, Yaya and Dede should have being favorites for that award.

‘‘Aubameyang is very good player if you look at him in the European league but you ask yourself how did he fare in AFCON and on what basis was he elected as the best African player? I don’t think it was fair but you know in football, lot of things happen’’.

On his part , Mr. Oppong Asamoah reiterated that, Yaya may be right with his comment after the awards saying the decision was ‘‘pathetic’’, ‘‘indecent’’ and brought ‘‘shame to Africa’’ and to him (Asamoah) the Manchester City player performed well both nationally and at club level.

‘‘Yaya may be right with his comment because he did well nationally and at his club and also Ayew’s exploits in England and with the national team. To me everything went wrong. It was as though Aubameyang knew he would win.

‘‘The same even happened to Aduana. When before a match someone says a team is in a rural area so they can’t win a match. How can you say this? A club that came and the very first time won a league and you say they cannot win GHALCA? That’s bad’’ he said.