Taking pictures, videos of ballots was not a party directive – Murtala Mohammed

Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed, has called for sober heads in response to the allegations of foul play by some National Democratic Congress parliamentarians following the side’s failure to reject the President’s ministerial nominees.

On Friday, six ministerial nominees were approved by parliament following a shock defeat of the NDC side in what many have described as a ‘betrayal’ of the party’s cause after more than 10 NDC MPs allegedly voted with the ruling party.

The NDC had been planning on rejecting the ministerial nominees as a way of forcing the hand of the President to reduce his size of government.

Following the incident, some NDC MPs as well as members of the general public have insinuated that the MPs that defected had done so because they were financially induced to do so by members of the ruling party.

The General-Secretary of the party, Fifi Kwetey, has since the shock defeat been publishing the names of MPs who he says had provided video and pictorial evidence of complying with the party’s directive to reject the nominees.

However, Murtala Mohammed says that approach may lead to a witch-hunting scenario where innocent MPs would be victimized in the process.

According to him, the party had failed to issue a clear directive that MPs were to take videos and pictures of their ballots, thus those who had done so, including him, had merely been taking initiative.

Therefore, the MPs who had not were not all guilty of the accusation.

“You see, we need to be very very careful. How about those who genuinely voted against these ministers but didn’t capture? Now if you’re going to be serializing this way on the basis of those of us who had video and those of us who took pictures, and some people didn’t take videos, they didn’t take pictures because there wasn’t a directive to do so, such a person would feel very unhappy. I think that we need sober heads to prevail under this circumstance,” he said.

He also urged other MPs to stop fueling the narrative that the defected MPs had taken bribes if they are not willing to name and shame those MPs publicly.

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