A daughter of the former Member of Parliament (MP) for the Asunafo South constituency, who has been banned from entering the United Kingdom (UK) over an alleged visa fraud, has said she should be blamed for her father’s woes.
According to the MP’s daughter, she deliberately cut contact with her father after she left the house in UK to visit an uncle in London, ahead of their scheduled departure date.
The daughter, 41-year-old Joyce Boakye, said she refused to leave the UK and illegally stayed there for more than three years.
The result of her action has resulted in a 10-year ban slapped on her father by the UK authorities. She made her confession in an interview yesterday.
She revealed that she put up with her boyfriend in London, hence her failure to return with her father to Ghana.
“I went with my father to the UK. I told him I was leaving for town, but I never returned that is why I overstayed. I told him I will return, but I met my boyfriend in town and I departed for his house.
I switched off my phone and removed my card so when my father attempted to reach me on phone, he was unsuccessful,” she said.
Ms. Boakye added that her father did not have her new number, “so I wondered how he got my number to tell me to come back to Ghana”.
“I intended to return with my boyfriend at his convenience. Excuse me for saying this, but I am old enough to stay away from home,” she narrated.
Ms. Boakye’s father is among other three sitting MPs who allegedly used an unauthorised person (a goro boy) to apply for visas and their diplomatic passports to apply for persons who went to the UK and overstayed.
A letter addressed to the Speaker and signed by Jon Benjamin, the British High Commissioner in Accra stated that, in the case of the former MP for Asunafo he applied for visas for himself and his 37-year old daughter, Joyce Boakye to visit a friend in London for 17 days.
The visas were granted and both travelled to the UK, but Mr. Boakye did not return with her father.
“She remained in UK and finally returned to Ghana just this month, having been in the UK illegally for over three years, and only then at our strong urging of Mr Boakye to bring her back.”
But Joyce Boakye said she should be held responsible for the incident and has appealed to Ghanaians to forgive her.
“I am pleading with my father and Ghanaians to forgive me. When I arrived, my father and I went to see the British High Commissioner and we pleaded with him too,” she added.
Meanwhile, her father has admitted acting irresponsibly by not reporting his daughter’s disappearance to security officials at the UK to help trace her when he noticed it was difficult finding her.
According to him, he feared that she would be incarcerated if found, hence his decision not to involve UK authorities over her disappearance.
-citifmonline.com
Pix- Mr. Boakye, former MP (NPP)
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