{"id":336285,"date":"2017-07-13T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T17:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=336285"},"modified":"2017-07-13T17:00:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T17:00:23","slug":"my-comments-werent-meant-to-offend-ahomka-lindsay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=336285","title":{"rendered":"My comments weren&#8217;t meant to offend &#8211; Ahomka-Lindsay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, has insisted that recent comments\u00a0attributed to him about diasporans were not meant to offend anyone.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Ahomka-Lindsay&#8217;s speech at the Ghana Diaspora meeting in Accra, garnered lots of attention after he appeared to show displeasure at diasporans\u00a0who &#8216;whined&#8217; about everything they felt was not going well in the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody likes whiners, people that spend all the time whining\u00a0really get on people\u2019s nerves so stop whining,\u201d the deputy Minister is quoted as having said.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to the public backlash which followed the address, the Deputy Minister stated that the comments he made were as a result of his personal experience and was in no way an attack on diasporans.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;None of my comments\u00a0were\u00a0meant to cast aspersions. They were an expression of my personal experience,&#8221; the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wish to assure the people of Ghana and all those who have been offended by my comments that I did not in any way intend to sound offensive in my presentation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Find below, the full statement by\u00a0\u00a0Robert Ahomka-Lindsay:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>13th July 2017<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>STATEMENT ON MY SPEECH ON DIASPORA MEETING\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I refer to recent discussions on a 2 to 3-minute clip from my 14-minute speech given at the Ghana Diaspora meeting in Accra. The clip is a complete misrepresentation of the speech and taken completely out of context.<\/p>\n<p>I was asked to give my candid opinion on my experience as a Diaspora returnee and how I would advise others who intend to make a similar journey. My speech was in 5 parts:<br \/>\n1. Your approach to trying to get results in Ghana<br \/>\n2. What you should expect when you make the move to Ghana<br \/>\n3. The opportunities available for you in Ghana<br \/>\n4. The rewards for perseverance<br \/>\n5. The next steps<\/p>\n<p>The clip being shown referred to section 1 of the speech. Listening to it independent of the other three sections gives a completely different meaning to the speech I would implore all that want to get a true picture of my speech to look at it on\u00a0YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>None of my comments were meant to cast aspersions. They were an expression of my personal experience. I wish to assure the people of Ghana and all those who have been offended by my comments that I did not in any way intend to sound offensive in my presentation. I hold all Ghanaians in the greatest respect and would not in any way do or say anything that would impugn their integrity.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Ahomka-Lindsay.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Edwin Kwakofi\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay, has insisted that recent comments\u00a0attributed to him about diasporans were not meant to offend anyone. Mr. Ahomka-Lindsay&#8217;s speech at the Ghana Diaspora meeting in Accra, garnered lots of attention after he appeared to show displeasure at diasporans\u00a0who &#8216;whined&#8217; about everything they felt was not going well [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[9250,3,9251],"class_list":["post-336285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-diasporans","tag-ghana-news","tag-robert-ahomka-lindsay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=336285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=336285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=336285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=336285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}