I never said the President was in my pocket – Kwesi Nyantakyi
7th January 2026
Former Ghana Football Association (GFA) President Kwesi Nyantakyi has strongly denied claims that he once boasted of having the President “in his pocket,” describing the allegation as false and deliberately damaging.
The claim resurfaced ahead of the release of investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas’s Number 12 documentary, which exposed alleged corruption within Ghana football and led to Nyantakyi’s downfall from football administration.
Some reports suggested that during interactions with an undercover investor, Nyantakyi claimed he could influence the country’s political leadership. However, speaking in an interview with JoyNews, the former 1st Vice President of CAF dismissed the allegation outright.
“I never said the president was in my pocket. I never said that anywhere,” Nyantakyi stated. “That allegation has gained so much notoriety that it will be illogical for me to even stand up to contradict it.”
He described the claim as a fabrication designed to destroy his public image.
“It was the figment of somebody’s imagination just to discredit me and let me look very bad in the eyes of the public, and they succeeded,” he said.
The Number 12 exposé, which aired in 2018, showed Nyantakyi receiving $65,000 from an undercover journalist and making comments interpreted as suggesting he could leverage political connections to advance business interests.
Following the revelations, Nyantakyi resigned from his positions at the GFA, CAF, and FIFA in June 2018. In October that year, FIFA imposed a lifetime ban on him from football-related activities, a sanction later reduced to a 15-year suspension.
Despite maintaining that some of the most damaging allegations were untrue, Nyantakyi acknowledges that the documentary permanently altered both his professional career and public standing.