Bombshell: Pius Hadzide Rips Twi-Speaking Ghanaian Journalists Over Australia Visa Scandal

Ghana's deputy sports minister Pius Enam Hadzide has accused some twi-speaking journalists of being architects of a Commonwealth Games visa racketeering scandal which rocked the nation two months ago, in what appears a damning assessment of local journalists.

He says predominantly Ghanaian journalists, who operate in a local dialect media space, failed to convince border control authorities in the Oceania region, leading to their deportation.

The global embarrassment led to the suspension of the country's deputy sports minister and was only reinstated by President Akufo Addo last month after being left in the cooler.

Some 60 Ghanaians who posed as journalists were flagged and subsequently deported by the Australian authorities after they were unable to produce concrete evidence to back their claim.

And reinstated deputy sports minister Pius Enam Hadzide has shed more light on the major reason for the shameful scenario.

" I even know some people who were asked to come back. Who were journalists but who failed to convince the border authorities in Australia that they were journalists," he told Ghanaweb.com

"We do a lot of twi-journalism here and if your speaking English, you expect that the journalist should be able to communicate in a certain manner. And that expectation is not met.

"That what you know but in Ghana, we also know that we have twi-speaking radio stations and people have a certain mastery over the twi than maybe in English or French and so on and so forth.

"And so if those expectations were not met and people were asked to come back, that is a situation that we can discuss.

"I was worried about the numbers. The individuals were left for the coaches and the federation to take care of. So I did not handle even visas for our technical team."

The claim will ruffle feathers in the West African nation with several twi-speaking journalists likely to fight off the damning claim.