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“I will put out a report but not to you (host)…I don’t report to you, I report to the auditor General, to parliament and when I do you'll get the information through those sources,” said Mahama Ayariga, Sports Minister.

This was in response to a question put to the Minister by host of PEACE FM's morning show ‘Kokrokoo’, Kwami Sefa Kayi. The host had sought to find out from the Sports Minister how much his ministry spent or budgeted for the 2015 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) as far as the Black Stars and its management team were concerned.

The budget became one of the topical issues in the country before and during the just-ended tournament as no one in the Sports Ministry as well as the Ghana Football Association was willing to disclose the amount involved.

Mahama Ayariga said he intentionally refused to talk about the budget because it was wrong to make it known before and during the tournament.

According to him, some of the teams were offered big monies just to defeat the Black Stars and so it will be wrong to make the budget known.

He said: “going into a tournament is like going into battle with your opponent and part of your arsenal in a battle is how much resources you have since the kind of resources you have determines how effectively you can prosecute your campaign… So the culture of wanting the minister to disclose every single item on his budget before a tournament is a very bad thing because it weakens you in terms of technicality and how you go into a tournament”

Kwami Sefa Kayi then pushed again for the Minister to tell Ghanaians about the budget since the tournament was now over but this was the response: “I will put out a report but not to you (host)…I don’t report to you, I report to the auditor General, to parliament and when I do you get the information through those sources.”