Allotey Jacobs, Social commentator
Social commentator, Allotey Jacobs, has implored President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to direct the Council of State to engage Health Minister, Dr. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, with regard to the resignation, calls on the latter.
The Health Minister has come under a barrage of criticisms due to his involvement in a shady deal to purchase Sputnik V vaccines for Ghana.
The Minister, during a Parliamentary Committee probe, stated why he went into the controversial deal without Parliamentary and Cabinet approvals.
“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 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 told the Committee.
Discussing the Minister’s gaffe during Peace FM’s morning show ‘Kokrokoo’, Allotey Jacobs iterated that the Minister should step down.
He stressed that, “things should be settled as quickly as possible”, therefore ”the President must let the Council of State advise the man to go home”.