The renowned broadcaster has his integrity intact after publicly maintaining stance on bonuses paid to Black Stars players and hefty budget Ghana’s botched 2019 AFCON campaign in Egypt.
A gang of media cabal belonging to the erstwhile GFA administration have gone to town and are putting vicious spin on the fringes while displaying selective amnesia towards the grind of wisdom and principle expressed by the Spokesperson of the Ghana FA Normalisation Committee.
Ghanaian social media space has been flooded with an extract of a Ghana Television’s Sunday Night Live show which featured former GFA Communications Director Ibrahim Sannie Daara, Joy FM journalist Gary Al-Smith and the man at the eye of storm. In the discussion on the show, Sannie denied seeing the budget and maintained that details should not be made available to the Ghanaian taxpayers as requested by the government of the day. As seen on the video Kwaku Yeboah opposed to the idea of treating the budget as a state secret and opined that poor Ghanaian taxpayer deserves to know details of how their money is being spent.
Quintessentially, that position extolled by Dan Kwaku Yeboah ‘yester-years’ has not changed and at no point has he altered that stance or subscribed to the position that Ghanaian citizens do not deserve to know how much of the national purse is being spent on the senior national team.
There is a monumental difference between the positions held by the two – while Ibrahim Sannie’s stance on the budget still violates the feeling of Ghanaians Kwaku Yeboah still stands with the ordinary citizen and insists that Ghanaians deserve to know how much is being spent on the national team or at least did not make any public or privately comments that suggests that he subscribes to the school of thoughts that believe that the budget for the AFCON should be treated as state secret.
In a staggering hold to position, the multiple-award winning journalist stated on national-radio (Peace FM) last Wednesday that he wouldn’t have drawn up the budget in such fashion he had his way.
It is key to note that none of the previous spokespersons of the GFA had the courage to admit publicly that Ghanaians are justified enough to criticise the content of the budget. As a matter of fact, previous spokesperson of the GFA have defended the budget with their live blood because they enjoyed from the bonuses and other entitlement. While honestly admitting that he took per diem Kwaku Yeboah has rubbished fabricated reports that he pocketed $10,000 of the winning bonus paid to the players. The 2018 GJA Radio Sports Journalist of the Year did not receive any bonus paid during the campaign in Egypt which is contrary to what was done by the previous FA Spokesperson.
Following the Brazil 2014 fiasco, issues of paying winning bonus to players dominated the discussion nationally and the Despite Media Group Head of Sports is on record to have stated that payment of bonus should be tied to performance by the players. While on Peace FM on Wednesday, he maintained that stance and insisted that players should have been the amount they received as bonus after winning the trophy and not what was exhibited.
While trumpeting calls for bonuses to be tied to the performance of the players and the technical team and advocating for a modest budget for future tournaments, the renowned broadcaster has also maintained his stance that investing more money than the price money of the tournament does not make economic sense and must be aborted.
These are some of the cardinal principles held by the NC Spokesperson and he has not departed from it BUT has rather re-echoed the believes in his recent commentaries. The cry and hue about his position are borne out of vendetta, malicious intents and diabolic simplicity.
By Haruna Ib’n Jawal
(Freelance writer)
