The now-resigned chief executive officer of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Mr Emmanuel Sin-nyet Asigri did not have the requisite academic qualification for that position, Nii Amassah Namoale, a former Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, has said.

Speaking on the Ghana Yensom show on Accra100.5FM on Monday, 2 September 2019, the opposition politician alleged that Mr Asigiri did not have a first degree, which, according to the ex-lawmaker, was the minimum requirement for that position.

“The requisite requirement for the NYA job is a first degree; you don’t have it, so, why do you lie?” Mr Namoale told show host Kwabena Prah Jnr (The Don).

Mr Asigri resigned from his post a few days after a member of the Authority’s Board, Mr Arnold Boateng resigned over what he described at the time as “real issues” at the Authority.

It is unclear at this stage the real reason for the resignation although the Daily Statesman reports that the NYA CEO was forced to resign over alleged procurement breaches.

The Daily Statesman newspaper on Saturday reported that the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, directed Mr Asigri, to resign.

This follows a petition brought to the attention of Chief of Staff regarding a questionable procurement procedure which the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) has been called in to investigate.

The former MP for La Dadekotopon, said: “Asigri was not even qualified for the job in the first place. He is just an HND holder. A lot of people enter into politics and they portray themselves as having attended school here and there and attained this degree or that degree, yet they don’t have those qualifications. People pretend to have degrees when they don’t actually have, and I will appeal to the political parties to be wary of that.”

Also, on the show was Mr Patrick Naryko, a policy analyst and member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), who said: “If the person forged his certificate, then I have a problem with that. Forgery is bad but, as we speak, we don’t know for a fact that he forged his certificate.

“I don’t have a problem if somebody doesn’t have a first degree because there are people without degrees but are working well. My only problem is if someone forges a certificate.”