Professor William Asomaning
The Board Chairman of the Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL), Professor William Asomaning, has rendered an unqualified apology to President Akufo-Addo over his (Asomaning’s) comments which sought to slant the number one citizen of the land.
That was after the Board, under his chairmanship, had questioned the supposed appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to manage the oil marketing company when he (Asomaning) had no evidence to that effect, except feeding into media speculations.
An online portal had reported that President Akufo-Addo had appointed Kwame Osei Prempeh as new GOIL CEO and also made fresh appointments to the Forestry Commission and the Ghana Health Service.
Without cross-checking the authenticity of the report, Prof. William Asomaning issued a statement saying due procedures in the purported appointment of the GOIL boss were not followed and that Patrick Akorli was still the CEO.
That compelled President Akufo-Addo to cause the acting director of communications at the presidency, Eugene Arhin, to issue a statement denying the claim, describing it as unfortunate and completely needless.
That, he said, was because “the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has not appointed a new CEO of GOIL.”
Under normal circumstance, he indicated that “one would have hoped, in the interest of best practices, that the issuance of such a statement by Prof. William Asomaning would have been hinged on concrete evidence in the form of appointment letters, and not mere speculation and conjecture by an online publication.”
He, thus, wondered what could have made the Board chairman of such a big organization of which the state controls a certain percentage of shares to come out to virtually question the credibility of the president with no shred of evidence to his claims.
But just a day after the denial by the presidency, an obviously embarrassed Professor Asomaning could not but send an apology to the president, expressing regret for the gaffe.
In a signed apology letter dated February 28, 2017, Prof Asomaning posited, “The Board of Directors of Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) take cognizance of the statement from the Office of the President and under the hand of the Acting Director of Communications dated 28th February, 2017, which statement has indicated that the publication on Ghanaweb to the effect that his Excellency the President has appointed a new Chief Executive Officer for GOIL, is not true.”
The letter underscored, “We, the members of the Board of Directors of GOIL, do hereby render our sincere apologies to Your Excellency for the embarrassment caused by the Board’s statement in response to the Ghanaweb publication of 24th February, 2017.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu