Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga says the majority side in Parliament outsmarted his side hence the rejection of his motion asking the government to absorb fees of tertiary students in the country.
Parliament on Thursday, January 28, 2021, kicked against Mahama Ayariga’s proposal, a decision the NDC member said left him ‘scandalized’.
He insisted that arguments leading to the rejection of his proposal could have been given a different lens such as efficiency in the payment of fees other than the source of money the state needed to carry out the move.
Ayariga argued that his motion was not directly to suggest that the government pays the full fees for students but allow for options such as getting the schools to take out certain components of the fees that were not applicable such as entertainment and sporting fees so that the fees are drastically reduced.
Speaking in an interview on Citi TV’s Face To Face programme, he admitted that his side was tricked into agreeing to vote despite not having the numbers in the chamber that day.
“All NDC members in the chamber that day voted for it. In fact, there was a mistake. If you take the videos of what transpired that day, you will see that the NDC side had a third of its members in the chamber because the Speaker had directed that because of COVID-19, the two sides should divide their members into three and only a third should come. So our whip rolled out a programme.”
“Now when the motion was introduced, the NPP side called for an amendment of the motion to a consensus motion which suggested they were going to support it. So Haruna Idrissu pressed, the Speaker pressed, and then I accepted the amendment. So to the best of knowledge of my colleagues, that day, the NPP side was not going to oppose the motion. So they sat in their offices and a third were told to stay and if there was going to be a vote, they will be asked to come and participate. So the NPP surprised us by opposing it. The Speaker himself said the NDC side did not have more than one-third in the chamber, and so he was considering if the votes should be cast later, but that was shot down.”
He reiterated that members of the National Democratic Congress side in Parliament were all in favour of his motion but due to the lack of numbers, the house agreed on not accepting his proposal.
“Because we did not object to the voice votes, the Speaker rolled out the plan and because we the NDC were only a third in Parliament, we voted for it, and clearly you could hear from the voices that they had won but all the NDC members supported the motion.”
