Former Indian diplomat Sam Pee Yalley claims that Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is a British citizen.
On June 8, 2023, during a GhanaWeb-recorded interview with XYZ TV, Yalley claimed that paperwork in his possession showed the vice president had British citizenship when he worked for the Bank of Ghana in the United Kingdom.
The vice president, he said, never resigned his British citizenship and is therefore ineligible to occupy public office in Ghana, exactly like James Gyakye Quayson, the former Member of Parliament for Assin North, who was expelled for failing to timely relinquish his Canadian citizenship.
“Do you know that the Bank of Ghana has had an international commercial bank in London for a long time? The Bank of Ghana normally sends directors there, and Bawumia was one of them.
“Now that the Supreme Court has decided that a person who holds dual citizenship cannot be a member of parliament, Bawumia’s record at the Bank of Ghana in London indicates that he is a British citizen. He was a British citizen way back in 2009 before ex-President Kufuor brought him to Ghana.
“He was the director of the international bank, and if you check their records, he wrote that he was a British national. One may ask whether Bawumia was a director of that bank and whether he ever signed that he was a British citizen. If so, when did he renounce it?” He quizzed in Twi.
Sam Pee Yalley made these comments in response to the Supreme Court of Ghana’s decision regarding James Gyakye Quayson, a former member of parliament from Assin North.
On May 17, 2023, the Supreme Court issued an order directing the Ghanaian Parliament to remove James Gyakye Quayson’s designation as an MP.
In the Michael Ankomah Nimfah vs. James Gyakye Quayson case, the supreme court of the nation decided that Quayson was unable to run for office in 2020.
The court found that when the former Assin North MP filed his nomination to run in the 2020 general elections, he did not provide evidence that he had given up his Canadian citizenship.