Andrew Appiah-Danquah, the Head of Legal Affairs for the United Party (UP), has said the financial institutions that were collapsed by the previous NPP administration was to serve people’s “parochial interest.”
He said the then government’s justification for collapsing the financial institutions was unconscionable, especially since the banks could’ve been revived with GH¢9 billion, but were collapsed at a cost of over GH¢20 billion.
Speaking on the BigIssue segment of the NewDay morning show on TV3 Monday, March 2, 2026, Appiah-Danquah said what any prudent government would have done would be to save the banks rather than collapsing them.
“How can it justify spending about 20 something billion to deal with a 9 billion problem? How can you have an issue with government deciding to bail out the banks, as against destroying them, where we have facts that show that a lot of the attacks on the banks was because of people’s parochial interest,” he stated.
He cited the Ato Essien and Capital Bank case, alleging a critical look suggests the bank was collapsed for someone’s parochial interest, not for the insolvency and other reasons they gave.
“Like Ato Essien’s case. If you go into the matter, the only conclusion you can arrive at is that Ken Ofori-Atta and the regime there pursued him because of people’s parochial interest,” he stated.
The financial sector cleanup announced by the government in 2017 heralded the revocation of licences of nine banks and more than 370 financial institutions including 15 savings and loans and eight (8) finance houses.
The exercise cost the state in excess of GH¢21 billion and threw thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of their dependents into disarray.
It is, however, factual, that GH¢9 billion could have saved the banks and other financial institutions according to financial experts.
The conversation stemmed from the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) delivered by President John Dramani Mahama in Parliament on Friday, February 27, 2026.
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