Director of Legal Affairs for the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Godwin Edudzi Tameklo, has said the extortion allegations against Minority Leader, Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, border on criminality and cannot be treated as mere political banter.
Reacting to reports that Afenyo-Markin had decided not to press further with the controversy surrounding the alleged $1 million extortion claim levelled against him by GoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi, he said it is within the rights of any citizen to take the matter up.
Speaking on the BigIssue segment on the NewDay morning show on TV3 on Monday, August 24, 2026, Mr. Tameklo said while the Minority Leader is entitled to take a personal decision not to pursue the matter, that decision does not extinguish the public interest dimension of the case.
“He (Afenyo-Markin) has taken the view that in the circumstances he feels that there is no need to press with this matter. He can decide what to do. But that does not also preclude any individual who feels strongly that the matters go beyond gist trading,” he said.
He argued that the nature of the allegations raised by Sammy Gyamfi and Eric Adjei, CEO of NEIP, goes beyond reputational attacks and enters the realm of criminal law.
“If these allegations had no criminality, that’s a different matter. But because this allegation go to the point of criminality, any citizen of this country can pick it up for the law enforcement agencies,” he stressed.
The NDC Legal Director’s comments come on the back of a petition filed by the United Party to five state institutions, including the Office of the Special Prosecutor, Attorney-General, CHRAJ, CID and the IGP and the Speaker of Parliament.
The United Party, through its Director of Communications Solomon Owusu and Director of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Andrew Appiah-Danquah, is asking for a probe into claims that Mr Afenyo-Markin attempted to demand $1 million from Mr Gyamfi and operated a team that used RTI requests to obtain information from public institutions, after which persons connected to the enterprise allegedly assumed the role of “negotiators.”
The United Party’s petition states that “if the allegations are true, they may disclose an attempt to use political standing, parliamentary influence, access to information or the threat of reputational injury as instruments for extracting a substantial private financial benefit.”
Mr Tameklo said such conduct, if proven, would amount to attempted extortion and abuse of public office, which are matters the state must not ignore even if the main complainant decides to stay quiet.
He added that the law allows any citizen who feels strongly about alleged criminal conduct to trigger investigations, especially when the allegations involve the use of parliamentary influence as leverage for private gain.
The Minority Leader has not publicly responded to the latest petition, but earlier statements from his camp suggested he wanted to move on from what he considered a distraction from substantive issues around the Bank of Ghana’s Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.
