Former Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko says his relationship with President Akufo-Addo has broken down.
According to him, the last time he spoke to the President directly was over a year ago adding telephone conversations have been nonexistent for some years now.
“I do not have a relationship with him now. No, I don’t. People get married for thirty years and they get divorced, don’t they?… Not because of hatred,” he told Accra-based Asempa FM.
He stressed: “Me, I will never let anybody bring me so low as to hate him. I don’t hate anybody, but there comes a time when circumstances make it that you go your way, you have to move on, so I have moved on”.
Mr Agyarko was sacked from government after he was alleged to have misled the President into approving the new AMERI deal through executive order. The deal had earlier been rejected by Parliament.
The novation and amendment agreement was seeking to buy out the deal Ameri Energy had with the government of Ghana under President John Mahama and handed over to a third party Mytilineos for 15 years.
Ghana would have ended up paying over Ghc1 billion under the new arrangement.
The joint committee on Finance and Energy of Parliament rejected the new deal because it had no signatures from the Attorney General and Finance minister.
Background to AMERI deal
The John Mahama administration in 2015 signed a contract with Africa and Middle East Resources Investment Group (AMERI) Energy, to rent the 300MW of emergency power from AMERI.
This was at the peak of the country’s power crisis.
The power agreement with UAE-based AMERI Energy cost $510 million.
But the then opposition led by Akufo-Addo found out that the government had been short-changed by AMERI as they presented an overpriced budget, and were overpaid by $150 million.
The NPP then vowed to renegotiate or cancel the deal when they won power.
Under the new agreement, a new company, Mytilineous International Trading Company, will take over the management of the AMERI power plant for 15 years.
The new company has offered to pay AMERI an amount of $52,160,560, with the government paying the remaining $39 million to the Dubai-based AMERI Energy to wash its hands off the deal entirely.
