General News of Monday, 6 January 2014

Source: XYZ

'Ken Agyapong bought no motorbikes for NPP'

Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey says the party’s hard-talking Assin Central Legislator, Kennedy Agyapong never bought any motorbikes for the NPP as he has been claiming on the airwaves.

“I have not received any motorbikes or anything from Kennedy Agyapong”, Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey said on Monday.

According to him, “I have been national chairman for the past four years, and I have never had Kennedy Agyapong bring me anything, either for a personal thing or for the party”.

“The only money I know of is the monthly deductions that MPs make to help run the party.”

Mr Agyapong recently branded the party’s national executives as “thieves” and accused them of pilfering items he imported into the country to help Nana Akufo-Addo’s presidential campaign in the 2012 elections.

Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey, however, said his hands are clean.

“I have not stolen before. I have never been called a thief until recently, and I strongly resent being called a thief”.

He said: “For over 25 years I was spending monies on behalf of some of the major companies in this country - Unilever, Kumasi Brewery, Guinness etc; so many of the major companies trusted me to spend their money. In all those years, nobody ever accused me of misspending their money or taking it for myself. I came out of spending other people’s money with an unblemished reputation”.

The former Cabinet Minister said he found it befuddling that his own party member will tag him and other top party executives as thieves.

“I was appalled. I was saddened”, he bewailed.

Obetsebi-Lamptey was one of 17 flagbearer aspirants of the NPP who were branded “thieves” by the ruling NDC’s General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia in the run up to the NPP’s 2007 presidential primary.

Making reference to that 2007 incident, Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey lamented in an interview with Accra-based Adom Fm that: “…For a party member to go out there and accuse his national chairman and national executives of being thieves, I felt very saddened. I have been regional chairman for three terms, and national chairman as well, and nobody has accused me of stealing funds”.