The information minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has expressed disappointment in former Minister for Science and Technology, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng’s implication of him in a damning report on illegal mining popularly known as galamsey.

According to him, he only attended a PRINPAG (Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana) event, jointly organized with the Bank of Ghana on financial reporting and never held any meeting to oust anybody from the government.

Reacting to a 37-page report authored by Prof Frimpong Boateng who was Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (ICIM) and accused the Ofoase-Ayirebi MP of holding a secret meeting to destroy him, Mr Nkrumah described the allegations as completely false.

He indicated that over the years, he has had nothing but great admiration for Prof Boateng’s public spirited works and as an inspirational citizen.

“I feel gravely offended over the false claims he has made and the hurtful conclusions he has sought to exact about me precisely because of the great esteem in which I have held him. I trust that in the coming months and years he will reflect deeply upon his own actions and comments which have led to his challenges. He should kindly leave me out of his personal fights. I am utterly disappointed, but I forgive him.”
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah

Commenting on the report, Mr Nkrumah stated that as it was customary at the PRINPAG event, he was received by organizers and protocol officers openly at the arrival ceremony, ushered into the event hall openly, invited to deliver his remarks openly and escorted for the group photograph afterwards openly. He explained that his exit from the event and the reportage of his remarks were also done openly.

Furthermore, the information minister explained that “neither the anti-galamsey fight, nor Prof Boateng were matters for consideration” at the BoG and PRINPAG event.

“How the former Minister morphs this event into a secret strategy conclave, with his downfall as the objective is completely beyond my imagination. The participants from the Bank of Ghana and PRINPAG will be shocked and saddened to read this claim of such an otherwise highly-held man.”
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah

Missing excavators in the country

Elaborating on a portion of the report which claimed that on the 13th of February 2020, Mr Nkrumah started a brief to cabinet with a report on ‘Frimpong Boateng and Missing Excavators’, he noted that this creates an impression that the brief to cabinet was a deliberate and sinister act targeted at him.

In response to this, Mr Nkrumah stated that it was Prof Frimpong-Boateng himself who wrote to the Ghana Police Service in January 2020 reporting the loss of some excavators and calling for an investigation. He indicated that it was also Prof. Frimpong-Boateng who in subsequent media interviews mentioned that the number of excavators missing were about 500.

Again, the information minister argued that on or around February 20, 2020, it was Prof Frimpong-Boateng who at Parliament House – during interviews on the SONA, engaged in exchanges with the media about the said excavators and promised that they will be recovered. He explained that these are the matters that occasioned the media reports about Prof Boateng and the said excavators.

“Further, it was Prof Boateng himself who was later to be seen in a video making comments about the anti-galamsey fight and the release of excavators. I Kojo Oppong Nkrumah was not responsible for his initial police report, his subsequent interviews, or any of the claims he made. To be clear, it was Prof Boateng’s own reports, interviews and videos that generated his media challenges around the time. I am thus disappointed that he would, in this document, seek to blame me for the media reports.”
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah