The key witness in Ghana’s ongoing election petition case, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has for the first time made a passing comment on his new appointment as the head of the Ugandan office of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

The 2012 vice presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) retorted to a congratulatory remark by the president’s lawyer at the Supreme Court on Tuesday April 23, 2013 that: “I think you should stop reading too many newspapers”.

Dr Bawumia’s new appointment, according to State-owned Newspaper, Ghanaian Times, was made in March 2013 and was effective from April 1, 2013.

Dr Bawumia, who is the second petitioner in the case, will be the resident representative of AfDB in Uganda.

The Head of External Relations and Communications at the Bank’s Head Office in Tunis, Dr Magette Wade confirmed to the Ghanaian Times that Dr Bawumia will “co-ordinate and supervise the operations of the bank for great portfolio efficiency and visibility on the ground”.

Dr Bawumia however is entitled to special leave according to the bank’s policy.

He therefore has the leeway to be absent until his country’s election petition case, of which he is the lead witness, is done away with.

This is Dr Bawumai’s second appointment with the bank.

He resigned from the same position in Zimbabwe, ahead of Ghana’s 2012 general elections to partner his party’s presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as running mate to contest the presidential election.

He took up that position after his first failed attempt to be vice president in the 2008 general election, in which he partnered the same Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The two gentlemen, together with their party’s National Chairman Jake Obetsebi Lamptey are praying Ghana’s Supreme Court to nullify the declaration of the governing National Democratic Congress' candidate, John Mahama, as winner of the 2012 presidential poll.

They claim the election was fraught with too many flaws.