Agyebeng is eligible and we recommended him for approval – Mahama Ayariga

A member of the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Mahama Ayariga, says Special Prosecutor nominee, Kissi Agyebeng, was unanimously recommended for approval because there wasn’t any reason to reject him.

He said the endorsement the nominee received was because he satisfactorily met the legal requirement of the position.

“There were no issues to disqualify him, so as a committee we have agreed that he is eligible to be the Special Prosecutor, and we recommended him to parliament for approval”, Mahama Ayariga said on Eyewitness News.

The Appointments Committee recommended him after the nominee was questioned for about four hours on Thursday, July 22, 2021.

Chairman of the Committee, Joe Osei Owusu said, the recommendation was a unanimous decision.

Mahama Ayariga said: “We asked the questions, and he gave the responses. The basic thing we really looked at was the requirements of the Act on who qualifies to be a Special Prosecutor. He met all the requirements. Of all his qualifications, we haven’t been able to show that any of them bars him from being the Special Prosecutor. That is usually the main thing we looked at as a Committee.”

“All the other things people discussed such as his age, competence, position on issues, and all of those are things we asked to get his take, but legally if you look at the main criteria set out by the law, definitely, he met all of them”, Mahama Ayariga noted.

Parliament will later debate the report of the committee and decide on whether the nominee should be approved or rejected.

“We [will] put our recommendation [forward] for the House to determine whether to approve or disapprove of our recommendation. As to how other people view his [Kissi Agyebeng’s] answers, I’d rather leave it to them and stay within the rules to make recommendations to the House. The committee unanimously agreed to recommend him [Kissi Agyebeng] to the House for approval,” Joe Osei Owusu said.