Ex-Sports Minister, Nii Lante Vanderpuye has stated that President Akufo-Addo’s appointment of Isaac Asiamah has not yielded the needed results.
Isaac Asiamah was appointed by the Akufo-Addo in 2017.
Under Isaac Asiamah’s administration, the sports sector has seen a significant amount of development including the renovation of the sports stadia, the building of multi-purpose sports facilities and partnering with the Youth Employment Agency to grant financial support to athletes affected by the Coronavirus pandemic.
Despite all these achievements, Nii Lante Vanderpuye says the work of the Sports Minister is not enough.
According to the Member of Parliament (MP) for Odododiodio in an interview on Joy FM, Isaac Asiamah has focused too much on football, leaving other disciplines unattended to.
“I get complaints all the time. Boxers are complaining, Arm-wrestling complaining, weightlifting complaining, almost all the sporting disciplines are complaining. If they don’t get support from the Ghana Olympic Committee, they don’t get support at all. This is not good for Ghana Sports,” he said.
“I thought that the President was somebody who I have known to love sports but I think he has a bad choice of a minister, that’s the problem. I must be frank with you, I said it at the beginning that the President made a mistake of choosing Asiamah as the Minister for Sports”.
According to the former Sports Minister, the Isaac Asiamah administration is benefiting from his vision when he was in office.
“As we are talking today, weightlifting is the only sporting discipline in Ghana that is seeing some level of upliftment, maybe to some extent swimming. Even swimming, if we had not built a swimming pool at the Bukom Boxing Arena [Trust Sports Emporium], where will swimming be?”.
“Ghana was able to host the Africa Zone 2 tournament, brought so many countries, close to about 16 countries to Ghana. That is good, that’s the vision that we had. Initially, we were going to build only a boxing Arena but we said no, lets swimming, let’s add this, and let’s add that. It takes people with the vision to build sports for the future,” he added.