Former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng has made a damning revelation about the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, in his report on the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM).
According to Prof Frimpong-Boateng, Mr Oppong Nkrumah assembled a group of journalists at the Forest Hotel in Dodowa to “discuss a strategy to bring me Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng down”.
On how he got to know about this plot, the respected heart surgeon said a friend of his, who is also a journalist, had a call from one of the journalists in the meeting about the discussions that went on.
“He further informed my friend to watch out for headlines in some newspapers in the days following the meeting,” Prof Frimpong-Boateng wrote in his report on the fight against illegal mining.
The report, sighted by 3news.com, is dated March 19, 2021.
The former flagbearer aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) said true to the words of the journalist, on Monday, February 10, 2020, The Informer newspaper, whose editor was said to have been part of the meeting, had a banner headline: ‘Stolen Excavators Brouhaha. . .Akufo-Addo sacks Frimpong Boateng. . .For Soiling Image of Govt’.
“As if that was not enough on Thursday, 13th February 2020 at the 71st Cabinet Meeting, Mr Oppong Nkrumah in his regular report to Cabinet talked about news that was trending in the week. The first thing he mentioned was Frimpong-Boateng and 500 missing excavators,” he wrote.
The scientist cites Mr Oppong Nkrumah as one of the ministers who abandoned the IMCIM despite being members.
“It must be noted that Mr Oppong Nkrumah, as Minister for Information, was a member of the IMCIM and he never called me to find out what I knew about ‘missing excavators’ but he found it worthwhile to magnify it in press and also present the falsehood before Cabinet for reasons best known to him and his co-conspirators.
“If Kojo Oppong Nkrumah and the likes of him have presidential ambitions, they should pursue it on merit and not attempt to destroy a hard working patriot, whose only ambition is work to achieve a Ghana Beyond Aid.”