Pardon Minister of Health – NPP’s Dennis Aboagye

Former Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of the Akuapem North constituency, Dennis Miracles Aboagye, has appealed to Ghanaians to ‘cut some slack’ for the Minister of Health Kwaku Agyeman-Manu for his admission of error in judgement regarding the acquisition of ‘overpriced’ Sputnik V vaccines through an Emirati middleman into the country.

He said the circumstances under which the Health Minister procured the overpriced Sputnik V was very dire, as the country was in urgent need to procure vaccines at all cost to fight the surge in coronavirus cases in the country at that time.

Mr Aboagye said the Health Minister’s excuse of circumventing parliamentary and cabinet approval in procuring the vaccines in his attempt to save lives in the country before coming back to regularize with parliament is pardonable if put in the right context.

He said if put into the right context, the right question to ask is that, was Mr Agyeman-Manu able to procure vaccines for the country when needed in the country? He said the answer is barefaced because he was able to bring home the vaccines to dispense to the frontline workers and people with underlying health problems in the country.

In an interview with Johnnie Hughes on the 'New Day' show on TV3, Thursday, July 22, Mr Aboagye pointed out that the Health Minister deserves to be pardoned for his admission of error in judgement concerning the acquisition of the controversial Sputnik V vaccines into the country.

He was commenting on the back of the admission by the Minister of Health Kwaku Agyeman-Manu before the ad hoc Sputnik V Probe Committee in parliament to answer for the controversies such as the allegation of procuring overpriced vaccines at $19 instead of the $10 ex-factory price into the country.

“He has admitted the error and admitted to the flouting of the procedure, for him, he prioritized getting access to vaccines over procedure. Which now he says, with the benefit of hindsight I think that I could have done it better than I did now. For me, my question is that, was he able to secure some vaccines for us in the midst of the chaos? Yes he was able to, yes some of the people with underlying problems, our elderly people and some critical functionaries and those who are in the frontlines have been vaccinated.

“With that for me, I think it is something that we can look at and say let’s cut the minister some slack, he may have flouted the rules but they were under unconditional circumstances. Conditions we have never witnessed before, one that came like a hundred years ago when we had the Spanish flu and all of that. And so let’s pardon him on this one,” he appealed on the New Day.