I moderated IEA debate because I was a fair person – Prof. Opoku-Agyemang The running mate for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, has said she was not representing the party when she moderated a presidential debate organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in 2012.

John Dramani Mahama’s running mate said on a Citi TV current affairs programme that she “wasn’t even in the country” when she got the invitation to moderate the debate.

“I was not invited to that debate by the NDC. Far from it. I was invited to that debate because somebody thought I would be fair and I liked that fairness,” she said.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang also refuted claims that she had been invited by then-President John Mahama.

“At the time I am not sure I could have called myself a leading member of the NDC,” she told host of The Point of View, Bernard Koku Avle.

She also refuted allegations that she leaked questions to then-President John Mahama saying the moderators did not have create the question bank. “The question bank was not created by us…The person is there to explain why they want the position not to you but the audience,” she noted.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang was at the time coming off her term as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast.

She said she was hoping she could finally focus on her work on the executive board of UNESCO and was preparing for a three-week meeting in France when she was informed of her selection as a moderator of the presidential debate.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang also assured that her role on the IEA debate had no bearing on her later becoming Education Minister under the Mahama administration.

She said persons who thought she was given the position because she moderated the debate “don’t know me. Do they think that was all I could have bargained for if that was the case?”

Her fellow moderator during the debate was Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, then a journalist with the Multimedia Group is currently the Information Minister in the Nana Akufo-Addo government.

John Mahama, Nana Akufo-Addo, People’s National Convention (PNC) flagbearer, Hassan Ayariga, and the Convention Peoples Party’s Dr. Abu Sakara took part in the debate.