Health Minister Entangle Himself In More Lies Over Sputnik V ‘Chobo’ Move

Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, has entangled himself in more lies, months after his apparent move to create and loot money from the shady purchase of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine from a convoluted arrangement backfired on his head.

Agyemang Manu reiterated his tired claim that he had no ill motives whatsoever when he decided to purchase the vaccine through a paper company of Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a relative of the ruler of Dubai at US$19 per vaccine when the Russians who were manufacturing the vaccine were selling it at US$10 per vaccine.

“When the issue of Sputnik-V came up, in fact, there was a decision to go in for more vaccines because there was a scarcity of vaccines as many countries had closed their borders,” Agyemang Manu rehearsed the tired excuse in an interview on Accra based Adom FM.

Then he fantastically claimed that “What encouraged us to buy those vaccines was that the same vaccine was sold at $38 elsewhere, so considering that, we thought it was cheap.”

The claim that some people were selling Sputnik, which comparatively is not even as popular as cheapish AstraZeneca is a jaw-dropping claim that only the Health Minister can explain because since the emergence of COVID-19 no country or company has sold a vaccine for as much as US$38.

In the interview on Adom, Mr. Kwaku Agyemang Manu did not clearly name the countries that were selling Russia’s Sputnik vaccine for a whopping US$38 per vaccine.

According to him, “It was through the search for the vaccines that some other people offered us some, but it was some kind of take and pay which you would still have to pay even when you haven’t received yet”.

The facts of the case in which Mr. Kwaku Agyemang Manu is highly suspected to have tried to cream off money from the COVID-19 pandemic was that the Minister went behind Parliament and tried to buy Sputnik at almost twice the price of the vaccine.

That move was a criminal one because per Ghana’s laws, any contract that the country signs with an offshore company must receive parliamentary approval.

Agyemang Manu claims that he and his Ministry were constrained to bypass parliament and go for the sputnik V vaccine at that inflated price because of the public health danger that Ghana was facing from COVID-19. Interestingly, even though he claimed there was a need for a quick source, Kwaku Agyamang-Manu paid the amorphous company of Sheikh Al Makhtoum and sat for months without receiving any vaccine.

Eventually, the Sheikh who had been paid $2,850,000 for his services out of an expected $5,700,000, delivered only 20,000 out of 300,000 doses of the vaccines paid for.

The shadiness around the whole deal would annoy Ghanaians into demanding that he be fired as Minister.

But in the Adm FM interview, Mr. Agyemang Manu claims his excellent handling of COVID-19 IN Ghana has led to many countries chasing after him for his service.

“As of now, WHO has chosen two countries which have managed the Covid-19 effectively and so many are chasing me to assist them in controlling Covid-19 just as we were able to control ours.”

Interestingly, in Ghana, less than 17% of the population has been vaccinated against COVID, with the majority of people mainly depending on natural immunity to survive the virus.