MUMUNI IMPLICATED IN CORRUPTION SCANDAL, AFAG says he MUST RESIGN

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…Insists Leading Member Of AFAG! Two leading members of the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), Mr. Godfred Odame and Mr. Kwabena Bomfeh, popularly known as Kabila, have called on Foreign Minister Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni to resign as a matter of urgency. They have said that with the confirmation that Alhaji Mumuni indeed has an audit report from the Auditor General implicating him in financial malfeasance and wrong-doing, the Foreign Minister is no longer fit to lead this country in international negotiations, particularly in financial matters. Speaking to this newspaper yesterday in various interviews, the two leading members of AFAG insisted that the time has come for Alhaji Mumuni to resign, or for the President to strip him off his post pending the conclusion of the various procedures that would purge Alhaji Mumuni off the various findings against him in the NVTI Audit Report. Speaking to this newspaper yesterday Mr. Godfred Odame, who is a lawyer, said that the laying of the report in parliament goes to affirm the points he and AFAG have been making. “I think that for so long as he has been cited by a report of the Auditor General which has been presented to parliament it would be unfair to the nation for him to continue to hold himself out as Foreign Minister. I say so because he is the Chief Ambassador of our nation, one who is supposed to represent the image of the nation, and the Audit Report is going to create a situation where anytime he mounts an international platform, people would say that he is a person who has been dogged by scandal, and criminality,” Mr. Odame said. He said that until Alhaji Mumuni purges himself fully of the findings in the Auditor General’s report he is not fit to hold himself out as a Foreign Minister of the land. “The question of fitness to represent the nation can be looked at from various perspectives. It is not so much about qualification. It is a question of whether being a public officer he is one that can be entrusted with state resources and power, and reading from the manner in which he conducted himself in office previously, we are sure that he is not one who can be entrusted with state resources and power, that he engaged in conduct that led to the state losing colossal sums of monies,” Mr. Odame said. “We therefore renew our call for his resignation or for the President to tell him to step aside,” he said, adding that Alhaji Mumuni’s continued stay in office was embarrassing to the nation. On his part Mr. Kwabena Bomfeh, who is the National Youth Organizer of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), said that even though they expressed their dissatisfaction with the nomination process in the first place, parliament went ahead to approve Alhaji Mumuni to become a substantive minister. He said that the Constitution was clear on whether a person who has been found liable by a constitutional body can serve as a minister. He said that until those adverse findings are set aside by a court of competent jurisdiction or by the body that made them, the person against whom the findings have been made becomes unwholesome for public office. “This not an individual who can go anywhere as the face of Ghana in seeking anything financially related and for this reason plus the fact that the Audit Report has been properly laid before parliament according to the laws of the land and the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament is now going to sit on it and make further pronouncement we feel that the man cannot be a judge in his own court. He should step aside or resign! That is the only way we can be sure that the executive would not interfere with the work of the legislature in coming out with the truth!” Mr. Bomfeh said.