Mustapha Hamid has said he is “extremely excited” and “over the moon” to have been chosen by President Nana Akufo-Addo as Minister-designate of Information.

“Mr Chairman, I am very excited to do this job, I shall do my best,” he told Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Thursday, 9 February.

Shortly after his nomination, Mr Hamid was reported as having said he would have preferred a different portfolio to the Information Ministry.

Asked by Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu if he regretted making that comment, Mr Hamid said, “I regret the way that it was understood, it was completely misunderstood.

“I am extremely excited; I’m over the Moon,” he emphasised.

In response to a question about the relevance of the Ministry of Information in today’s world of ever-expanding communication technology, Mr Hamid said: “I think the Ministry of Information is very important, it is very important in the sense that the difference between free democratic societies and societies that are undemocratic and not free is that under authoritarian societies, information is controlled, it is muscled, citizens do not have access to government information and what their government is doing and citizens don’t have a way of giving their government feedback, but in our democratic dispensation, a Ministry of Information is important in order to give timeous, accurate and truthful information to the citizenry on how the governance process is going and also to receive feedback from the citizens that will inform government programmes.”