The Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Murtala Mohammed, has said he meant no disrespect to spare parts dealers when he criticised Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu for his back and forth with the Speaker of Parliament.
Speaking to Citi News, Mr. Mohammed said he was only stressing that the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, had been working as a lawyer before the Majority Leader entered Parliament.
Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who worked as a spare parts dealer in Suame Magazine, was challenging the Speaker of Parliament’s ruling that allowed for the tabling of a report from the Privileges Committee on three absentee MPs for debate.
While Mr. Mohammed felt the Majority Leader’s challenge was misplaced, he said he was not insulting the trade of dealing in spare parts.
“It is not about spare parts dealers, it is about Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu. If it has to do with the experience in Parliament, Bagbin is more experienced than him.”
“And I am not saying that if you are not a lawyer, you can’t comment on legal issues but for him to question the intelligence and the capacity of the Speaker, making that emphatic statement that Bagbin doesn’t understand the law, I wanted him to know that at the time he was there, Bagbin was a lawyer.”
“Assuming he was a teacher and I say at the time you were teaching… it has nothing to with spare parts dealers. It has to do with Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who happened to be a spare parts dealer at the time Bagbin was already a lawyer,” Mr. Mohammed said.
