The deputy Minister of Trade, Robert Ahomka Lindsay, has rendered an unqualified apology for his “stop whining” comments.
According to him, the comments were made out of his experience as a returnee from the diaspora and not meant to malign anybody.
Mr. Lindsay speaking at an event organized by the diaspora community in Accra chided the participants who are mainly Ghanaians living abroad for excessively nagging.
“Nobody likes whiners, people that spend all the time whining really get on people’s nerves. So, stop whining; stop saying this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work; please, we know it doesn’t work so stop whining all the time saying it doesn’t work. If it worked, you probably won’t be sitting there,” he told the gathering to their chagrin.
His comments have since been strenuously rejected by the community, leading to uneasy friction during the event.
Reacting however to the criticisms he received following the comments, Mr. Lindsay, said his comments were not meant to cast aspersions on the Ghanaian returnees.
“None of my comments were meant to cast aspersions. They were an expression of my personal experience,” he stated in a statement he issued Thursday July 13, 2017
He added: “I wish to assure the people of Ghana and all those who have been offended by the comments that I did not in any way mean to sound offensive in my presentation. I hold all Ghanaians in the greatest of respect and will not in any way do or say anything that will impugn their integrity.”
He explained in a statement that the clip making rounds on social media in which he was heard chiding the Ghanaian diaspora of whining was a complete misrepresentation of the speech he delivered which is 14 minutes long.
According to him, the speech he gave at the Ghana-diaspora meeting in Accra was in five parts and the clip being circulated referred to section one of the speech and listening to it independent of the rest gives a completely different meaning.
