Ex-convict,Abuga Pele, who left prison after being pardoned by President Akufo-Addo has promised to tell Ghanaians at the appropriate time, the circumstances that led to his incarceration.
The former National Coordinator of the defunct Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) was sentenced to prison together with a businessman, Philip AkpeenaAssibit, for their involvement in the GH¢4.1 million GYEEDA scandal.
A former Member of Parliament for Chiana-Paga in the Upper East Region, Abuga Pele, until the Presidential pardon, was to serve six years in prison.
Put before court in 2014, the two were found guilty of entering into an unlawful agreement and were jailed on February 23, 2018.
Breaking his silence since his release in July this year, Mr. Pele explained his quietness was because the truth would one day find its way out.
He said, “If I have not said anything concerning my incarceration or what led to it or what the outcome has been, it is because the truth, as has been said often, will surely come out one day.”
Abuga Pele was speaking at Paga–Nakolo in the Upper East Region on Saturday, August 21, after receiving a rousing welcome back to his hometown.
While thanking the President for granting him pardon, he said he had a good impact on the lives of prisoners at the Nsawam prisons.
He said, “Thank God for my release. I thank the President, I thank the people of Nakolo and I thank all the people who were instrumental in getting me out of prison. There is another day that may come to enable me to explain a lot of things and say a lot of things.”
He continued, “The people in prison are my younger brothers, my sisters and my fathers. Some of them needed help and maybe God sent me there to help them.
“I became the headmaster of the school that produced graduates. They do the Distance [Learning] course from Cape Coast. I was the coach for the young football team. I took the opportunity to entertain the whole prison,“he remarked.
President Akufo-Addo granted a presidential pardon to the former NDC lawmaker Abuga on health grounds.
Background
The Financial and Economic Crimes Division of the Accra High Court, presided over by Mrs Justice Afia Serwaa Asare-Botwe found Assibit guilty of putting in false claims that he had secured $65-million World Bank funding for the creation of one million jobs for the youth, resulting in the government parting with GH¢4.1 million.
The court also found Pele guilty of acting in a manner that resulted in the loss of the amount to the state.The former MP was slapped with a lower sentence because the court held that there “was no evidence that he benefited from the proceeds of the crime.”
Source: Mynewsghana
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