Social commentator, Sydney Casley Hayford, has said that it was insulting for Gender and Social Protection Minister Nominee, Otiko Djaba to describe former President Mahama as evil and wicked.
Otiko Djaba on Tuesday refused to apologize for her comments against the President when she was queried by some Minority members serving on Parliament’s Appointment Committee.
She defended her comments, saying she spoke out of conviction and would therefore neither apologize nor withdraw her comments. “The President is my brother and I spoke from my convictions.
I made the statements that I made as a wake up call for him. We are building the nation.He was running for reelection and I felt that the people who should tell him as it is were not telling him as it was.They decided that because he was my brother , they did not want me to speak and when I talked about him being an embarrassment, I spoke in relation to SADA.
SADA is very dear to my heart.My mother is a Northerner, the incidence of poverty is highest in the three Northern Regions and for a President who comes from the Northern Region, who promised to alleviate poverty, what happened to the Guinea fowls?
It was an embarrassment to me and to the North. The Chiefs of the North actually made that statement and so I don’t owe him or you any apology. We are developing and building a nation,” Otiko said. But sharing his thoughts on the development that transpired in Parliament for which reason the minority is refusing to approve her nomination, Mr. Casley Hayford said Otiko Djaba’s comments could be equated to insults.
“They were insulting comments,” he told host of Citi FM’s Big Issue, Umaru Sanda Amadu. “In the build up to the campaign, everybody says all sorts of things against each other . We seem to have allowed that on our platform …and the citizens seem to appreciate, and we laugh about it and for us it becomes fun,” Casley Hayford added.
Casley Hayford intimated that, Otiko should have apologized for being “sarcastic and cheeky” after being queried by members of the Committee, instead of taking a rather stiff stance.
Meanwhile, Parliament is expected to sit and vote on Otiko Djaba’s approval on Tuesday, 7th February, 2017, since the House could not agree on her nomination by consensus.
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