The former minister for science and technology, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has received “utter disappointment” from the information minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, for mentioning him in a damning report on illegal mining, also known as galamsey.
The Ofoase-Ayirebi MP was charged with holding a secret meeting to assassinate him in a 37-page report written by Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, the former Minister for Science and Technology and Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (ICIM).
Oppong Nkrumah, in response, said the claims were entirely untrue and that he still forgave the former minister despite being deeply hurt by them.
“Over the years, I had nothing but great admiration for Professor Frimpong-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.”
Oppong Nkrumah asserts that he never convened a meeting to remove anyone from office and that he only ever went to a PRINPAG (Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana) event on financial reporting that was jointly organized with the Bank of Ghana.
“Indeed, the facts are 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. It was Prof. Frimpong-Boateng himself who in subsequent media interviews mentioned that the number of excavators missing was about 500. Again on or around February 20, 2020, it was Prof Frimpong-Boateng himself 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”.
“For the record, these are the matters that occasioned the media reports about Prof Frimpong-Boateng and the said excavators. Further, it was Prof. Frimpong-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 Frimpong-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.”
