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Director of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Sammy Awuku says he is utterly disappointed in broadcaster Kwasi Kyei Darkwa, affectionately called 'KKD', for accusing him and the Authority of sabotaging State-owned media, the Ghana Television Network (GTV).

KKD leveled serious allegations against the NLA Boss when he appeared on Onua TV's morning show and purportedly said Sammy Awuku had deliberately abrogated the Authority's contract with GTV and handed it over to a private media organization, United Television (UTV).

He angrily questioned the motivation behind the contract cancellation and claimed it's an attempt to collapse the State institutions.

But in an interview on Peace FM's morning programme "Kokrokoo", Sammy Awuku noted that KKD was misinformed and had peddled falsehood to the public.

Sammy Awuku Opens Up

He dispelled notions that some political or powerful forces were behind the abrogation of the contract.

He revealed that the NLA took the right steps ensuring GTV had the chance to review its operations with running their live draw and also have other concerns it expressed about delivery of service that GTV was giving them addressed on time.

"I've so much respect for GBC and what they do but sometimes, sacrifices must be borne in the supreme interest too of the government work we are doing . . . on three or four occassions I met the GTV crew there and I ask our operations team about their state of the work and live streaming. My operations team inside the draw room said, boss, GTV doesn't help us when we speak with them because sometimes they want them to give them ideas on how to produce something to also catch a certain segment of our people."

He added that GTV was being paid GHC 200,000 a month for showing their live draw.



" . . with some equipment they bring for the streaming, my people have complained that they should upgrade their machines, then I asked the crew that I want to meet their management because we were paying GTV 200,000 cedis a month for the live draw . . . I told the crew that I would like to meet the management once, twice. In fact, our contract with them would expire in February, 2022 which has already passed," he stated.

"On two occassions, I didn't get their reply," he disclosed.

However, the Authority lawfully gave GTV an advanced notice of three months before any action was taken as it wrote a letter dated in August 2021 which was addressed to the Director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation informing them the contract would be canceled in November of the same year if GTV failed to meet their requirments, but the television network didn't respond till date.

He stated that he inquired from his team whether or not the letter had reached GTV just to be sure the network had indeed received it because it was strange that they had no reply and his team confirmed the letter was with the administration of the media house.

Sammy Awuku further stated that, after they had terminated their contract with GTV, he attended a programme organized for CEOs and "luckily for me, the GBC Boss happened to be one of the speakers for the event. So, during a break, he came to me and said this is Prof, the Director-General of GBC, and I responded that I was disappointed in them because we didn't hear anything from them. Then he replied that he is very sorry about the issues that have happened and the miscommunication because it wasn't brought to my attention but he said something that I'm not hear to ask you to reverse your decision but I'm here to apologize that whatever occurred wasn't intenational. So, I told him that we are now working with UTV but our doors are still open in the future".

"It was an unfortunate situation and decision, however the NLA needed to take a commercial and business decision," he emphasized but assured that the NLA is expanding its activities, so it is possible they would have a new contract with GTV should the need arise.

"We are always glad to also give more support to State institutions. We support many State institutions as an Authority and we support many individuals as well who are actors within these public sectors."