Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye, a former minister of sports, rejected the Sports Ministry’s investigation and instead demanded an impartial examination of the Norway Para-Athletes controversy.
This follows the announcement by Mustapha Ussif, the minister of sports, of a probe into the incident involving the suspected abduction of Ghanaian Para-athletes in Norway, which led to one death and one arrest.
He expressed concern with the Norwegian Embassy’s failure to maintain due process during the athletes’ application process in Ghana.
Nonetheless, Mr. Vanderpuye highlighted the necessity for an impartial agency to look into the Norway incident while citing the Australian Commonwealth Games visa issue, in which government officials were implicated, in an interview with Eyewitness News on Citi FM.
He raised doubts about the Sports Ministry’s investigation’s validity and hinted at possible official collusion.
The attempt by the Sports Minister to assign blame for the Norwegian Embassy’s failure to guarantee due diligence in the application procedure was also questioned by the former Sports Minister.
The member of parliament stated that an impartial inquiry is required to find the facts and that the embassy cannot be held accountable.
He said, “Well the embassy cannot be blamed. What do you expect? We are talking about a regime under which we’ve seen a situation where people were virtually made athletes.
“We all know what happened, the Commonwealth Visa Scandal. In that situation, government apparatchik officials, and state officials were involved. What has come out of that issue? Under this government, everything is possible.”
“I would not surprised if this so-called issue of forged documents and the rest has an official endorsement. If this had not blown out, who would have heard about it? We’ve seen it before where there was official complexity in the issuance of visas for people to go to Commonwealth Games in Australia when they were actually not athletes, they were not journalists, they misrepresented themselves, they were sent there so if it has happened again, with Amputee Team which is not our National Amputee Team according to the President of Ghana Disabled Sports Association, then who do you blame? I would require an independent body doing the investigation, not the Ministry itself doing the investigation.”
