Mark Woyongo
High-ranking government officials, including former Interior Minister, Mark Woyongo, have been interrogated by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), on the controversial Mahama Ford gift saga.
The officials were made to answer questions on Mahama’s decision to accept the gift from a Burkinabe contractor, Djibril Kanazoe, when he (Mahama) was vice president in 2012.
Sources close to CHRAJ confirmed this to Citi News.
The CHRAJ investigators are also expected to present its report on the saga by the end of August 2016.
Mr Woyongo, who is now a minister of state at the presidency, was the Upper East Regional Minister through whom the Ford Expedition vehicle was sent to President Mahama, after allegedly receiving it from the then Ambassador to Burkina Faso, Chief Dauda Bawumia.
The Youth League of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and a private citizen, (Nana Adofo Ofori) petitioned CHRAJ with claims of conflict of interest against the president and called for an investigation into his receipt of the gift.
The presidency subsequently submitted volumes of documents to the Commission, in which he (Mahama) rejected accusations of bribery and corruption leveled against him.
CHRAJ is in custody of the vehicle’s log book and other relevant documents to guide it bring closure to the matter after investigaions.
Background
President Mahama came under intense public criticism for accepting the Ford gift worth about $100,000 from the contractor, allegedly to influence him.
The Burkinabe admitted giving President Mahama a Ford Expedition vehicle, for which the president called to thank him.
The gift, according to reports, was bait by the contractor to win a bid to execute the Dodo Pepeso-Nkwanta road construction project.
Mr Kanazoe’s company had also been contracted to build a wall at a cost of over half a million dollars, for the Ghana Embassy in Ouagadougou.
Mahama’s Letter To CHRAJ
President Mahama, in a letter signed by his lawyer, Tony Lithur, asked CHRAJ to dismiss the allegation of conflict of interest.
In the letter addressed to the acting Chairperson of CHRAJ, President Mahama held that he was innocent of all the allegations leveled against him.