Former Acting General Secretary of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), James Kwabena Bomfeh, popularly called Kabila, has called on President Nana Akufo-Addo to immediately sack Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu.
The Health Minister led a deal agreement through a middleman, Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum and SL Global to supply 3.4 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine to Ghana.
This agreement was done without the approval of Parliament and said to be an infraction of Article 181(5) of the 1992 Constitution.
During a probe before a Parliamentary Committee, the Health Minister offered reasons for his action saying, “I was in a desperate and helpless situation with the management of the covid numbers. In February, we had 78 deaths; by March, we had 56 deaths, and these were the numbers that pushed me to act…if you were the Health Minister, I think you might have taken certain decisions that in hindsight you may not have done those things. The country was not in normal times…this was the environment I found myself in and out of desperation, frustration, and so many things”.
“I relied on the Executive Instrument 61 passed by Parliament and hid behind emergency clauses that have been invoked to do that and come to Parliament and inform the House that this is what I had done and, therefore, I need regularisation and need the approval to provide it.
“I was seriously in a situation that could not make me think properly. I dealt with the Sheikh before the frantic efforts to get the vaccines from the right source. I made efforts, but I did not juxtapose the timing with the efforts that I made. I made that error and in hindsight, it won’t happen again,”
he added.
Discussing the issue on Peace FM’s ‘Kokrokoo’ programee, Kabila noted that he would have the Minister to resign but since he is not, then the responsibility lies on the President to take punitive action against him.
“He (Health Minister) has admitted that he should have done certain things properly but failed. That alone should let him resign but since he doesn’t want to resign, that’s why I’m calling on the President to sack him. It might not solve the problem but it will serve a precedent to his successor that this will be the person’s fate if he or she does a similar thing…The burden of democracy is submission to the rule of law. Constitutionalism, that’s the burden of democracy”, he said.
