P.V. Obeng:Prez Mills has approved Kufuor's new office

Audrey Micah, Ghanadot

Accra, March 16, Ghanadot - The Head of Government’s transition team, Mr. Paul Victor Obeng, has expressed surprise at the raging debate over the propriety of ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor’s acquisition of a state property for his private office.

Speaking at Asempa FM over the weekend, Mr. P.V. Obeng disclosed that the former president officially informed President John Evans Atta Mills of his desire to use the office and received the president’s permission to use it.

Mr. Obeng said he personally conveyed ex-President Kufuor’s request to President Mills orally, who he said readily agreed to the request provided his predecessor was comfortable with it.

What President Mills requested however, according P.V. Obeng, was for a speedy completion of all formalities in relation to the request, and the government therefore had been looking forward to the documentation to that effect.

He wondered where all the agitations, accusations and counter accusations had emanated from and said such unnecessary conducts only set the present government against the former.  He also suggested that the issue, perhaps, would not have erupted if due documentation processes had been completed in time.

Pronouncements from some members of government have sought to reprimand the former President for wrongfully appropriating the state bungalow, previously occupied by a minister of state, and while his officers have insisted that proper procedures were followed, public debate over the acquisition particularly in the media, have largely been reduced to insults across the political divide.

Ex-President Kufuor has since late January, 2009, been using the state property located at Ridge in Accra, as his office.

Meanwhile, the former Convention People's People (CPP) Presidential Candidate, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom has stated that he is disappointed and saddened by the raging debate over former President John Kufuor’s use of a state property as his private office.

“My expectation would have been that the current President’s office would contact the former president’s office, they would sit down together in private and they will resolve the matter and they will let us know what has happened. Why all of the public display of this person did wrong, that person did wrong, why,” he said.

“What even is more disappointing about this that, some of this has happened before in 2001 so I thought we would have learnt our lesson otherwise what we would be saying is that you did it me and now I am doing it to you. Then when does that end? In the end it’s the ordinary people who suffer.”

According to Dr. Nduom, the country is faced with much more important problems that needs to be addressed, such as the global economic and financial crises, instead of wasting so much time on this issue.

“It is the same unnecessary, unproductive NPP/NDC blame game, the same thing. If you recall, during the campaign we talked about it.

"Current President Mills took from what some of us were saying that there is no NPP/NDC Ghana and that he would unite the people. If that is the case, I really want to respectfully call on President Mills to call his people, to call former president Kufuor’s people and resolve this matter.”

Ghanadot