I am utterly disappointed but I forgive him – Oppong Nkrumah replies Prof Frimpong Boateng

The Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, has responded to allegations of his involvement in an attempt to derail Ghana’s fight against galamsey by the former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation, Prof Kwabena Frimpong Boateng.

Prof Frimpong Boateng in a report on illegal small-scale mining (galamsey) in Ghana, said that Oppong Nkrumah hatched a plot to bring him down over his (Frimpong Boateng’s) fight against the menace.

Reacting to this in a statement copied to GhanaWeb, the information minister said that all the allegations against him by Prof Frimpong Boateng are mere fabrications.

He added that the former science and technology minister is also blaming him for statements he (Prof Frimpong Boateng) made in the media and is also misconstruing some of the actions he (Oppong Nkrumah) took.

“To perform my duty of briefing cabinet on media reports cannot be a sinister act against another Minister. If the President needs to be briefed in cabinet on a matter by a Minister, it is done in the open, without malice, fear or favour. It would rather have been sinister to do so surreptitiously.

“Over the years, I 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,” parts of the statement read.

What Prof Frimpong Boateng wrote about Oppong Nkrumah in his galamsey report:

A report by the Chairman of the dissolved Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo cited Information Minister, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah as scheming to run him down.

The 37-page report filed by the former Minister for Environment, Science and Technology dated March 19, 2021, was to brief the president about the work of the Committee in its fight against illegal mining and the “way forward.”

One of the big names indicted in the report is the Minister for Information who according to Mr Frimpong Boateng gathered and incited a team of journalists to attack him.

“On Saturday the 8th of February 2020. Mr. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, the Minister for Information assembled a group of journalists from both NDC and NPP-affiliated media houses at the Forest Hotel in Dodowa to discuss a strategy to bring me Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng down. Whilst they were there a journalist from among the group called a friend of mine, also a journalist, and informed him about the plot that was being hatched. He further informed my friend to watch out for headlines in some newspapers in the days following the meeting,” he stated in the report.

“On Monday, 10′ February 2020, the INFORMER Newspaper, whose Editor was at the meeting had the Banner Headline on its front page as reproduced below:
“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,” the former minister said.

As part of his report, Prof. Frimpong Boateng alleged that some members of the Committee including Kojo Oppong Nkrumah sabotaged his work.

“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,” the report captured.

“After the 2020 general election, Oppong-Nkrumah on many occasions attributed the below expectation performance of the NPP to the Government’s management of the ‘banking crisis and the galamsey fight’. The fact is that those who did not vote for the NPP in the galamsey areas were not the miners but rather the hundreds of thousands of people living in the communities bordering the forests reserves, who were being harassed by mining companies such as Heritage Imperial,” he added.

Read Oppong Nkrumah’s full statement below: