Energy Minister-designate Boakye Agyarko has told parliament’s Appointments Committee that he was shot and almost killed in 1983 by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), a situation that forced him into exile in the United States as a refugee.

He told the committee that despite staying in the US for 25 years, he has never held US citizenship.

“I went to the US as a political refugee and qualified as such. In a matter of two years, I was able to upgrade my status from a refugee to that of a resident permit holder. This is because I had a number of equity situations, namely my sister could apply for me to hold a green card as well as my mother, who had become a naturalised American citizen. Throughout the period, I stayed in America on a green card, and at no point in time did I become a citizen of the United States.”

Narrating his ordeal at the hands of the PNDC, Mr Agyarko said: “I was employed by Management and Investment Consultants in 1980 after my national service. In June 1983, for those who will recall, there was a mutiny led by Lance Corporal Halidu Giwa. I was picked up by the military and sent to the Air Force Station and put against the wall and shot. I almost lost my life, and through the intervention of Monsieur Le Veloire and my two sisters who are seated behind me, I was able to leave Ghana through London to France, and then settled in the United States under very difficult circumstances. So, for that period, I was close to being an invalid and I didn’t do any work. Even though I left officially in 1983, Management and Investment Consultants wrote to me officially saying that as at the end of 1984 I was no longer employed with them, so my employment with them ended in 1984, and the next two years I was going through a series of surgeries and recuperation.”


Source: Ghana/ClassFMonline.com