Ofori-Atta took GH¢77m from the contingency vault for football; GH¢27.9m was spent on Black Stars – Ablakwa

The Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has said that parliamentary documents show that the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, took about GH¢77 million from the contingency vault for expenditure on football without the approval of parliament in 2023.

According to Ablakwa, over GH¢27 million of the money taken from the contingency vote was used on Ghana’s senior national male football team, the Black Stars, for the 2023 World Cup qualifiers and the transportation of supporters to Qatar.

The MP, who made these disclosures in an interview on Okay FM on Tuesday, January 30, 2024, added that parliament came to know of these expenditures after it queried the Minister of Sports, Mustapha Ussif.

“We raised issues about how the government was spending so much, particularly on football, out of the approved funds. So, we queried the ministry.

“If you read the sports committee report, you would see that we discovered that they had gone to take GH¢77 million from the contingency vault – the illegal vote created by Ken Ofori-Atta – in the year 2023 without the approval of parliament. They only came to account later,” he said in Twi.

Ablakwa added, “It is the sports minister and finance ministry who collaborated to do that. It is out of that money that just for our qualifiers and lifting fans from the Qatar World Cup, we spent GH¢27.9 million”.

Watch his remarks in the video below: