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Suspended General Secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC), Atik Mohammed, has lambasted Members of Parliament for their decision to hold an in-camera inquiry into the infamous bank collapse.

During deliberations on the issue by Parliament, the legislators agreed to keep the Finance Committee's probe into the failure of seven (7) banks from the public eye.

This is in spite of numerous petitions to the Speaker to open up the process and make it public.

Seven banks have collapsed within August 2017 and August 2018.

The first two, UT Bank and Capital Bank, went under in August 2017 and were taken over by GCB Bank with the blessing of the Bank of Ghana.

The other five - UNIBank, The Beige Bank, The Construction Bank, The Royal Bank and Sovereign Bank - went bust two weeks shy of a year after the first two failed.

On 1 August 2018, the central bank announced the fusion of the five other struggling banks into a totally new entity called Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited.

In total, the state is spending over GHS8billion of taxpayers’ money in rescuing the banks.

Parliament's probe of the collapsed banks started on Wednesday, 5 September 2018.

Representatives from the Bank of Ghana, Consolidated Bank, KPMG, PwC and the Ministry of Finance are expected to appear before the hearing. But owners and directors of the seven banks that have collapsed, some under controversial circumstances, will not be invited.

Officials of the Bank of Ghana, including the Governor, Dr. Ernest Addison, appeared before the committee on Wednesday morning.

Contributing to a panel discussion on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo", Atik Mohammed posited that for the sake of transparency and accountability, Parliamentarians shouldn't hold the hearing in-camera.

"....there is loss of confidence in the banking sector due to the collapse of the bank, therefore having it in the full glare of the general public would inspire confidence or roll back the wheels of confidence that was in our banking sector. But to do these things in camera, I mean I don’t know what you’re going to ask them and what they will say," he stated.

Atik questioned the logic in the decision by the Parliamentarians, asking "how do I get inspired that indeed what Parliament is doing, at the end of the day, should motivate all of us…what is there to hide? What secret is there to hide?”

“I’m against this idea of doing an in-camera probe…It doesn’t serve any purpose. You see, banking is about confidence”, he stressed.