The Ministry of Education has strongly rejected allegations of overpricing in the procurement of sanitary pads under the free sanitary pads programme, describing the claims raised by the Minority in Parliament as a fabricated attempt to tarnish the image of the John Dramani Mahama administration.
The controversy emerged during the debate on the 2026 budget when New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for Old Tafo, Vincent Ekow Assafuah, questioned the allocation of GH¢292 million for the purchase of 6.6 million sanitary pads for female students in public basic and senior high schools.
Mr Assafuah argued that the unit cost derived from the budget figure appeared significantly higher than prevailing market prices, suggesting possible inflation of procurement costs.
Responding to the allegations on Wednesday, November 26, 2025, Deputy Minister for Education Dr Clement Apaak dismissed the claims as baseless and politically motivated.
Speaking to journalists, Dr Apaak accused the Minority of deliberately trying to create a non-existent scandal to damage President Mahama’s reputation.
“For the Honourable Member of Parliament to disingenuously perform what the Minister for Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has described as chop bar arithmetic, we can only conclude that it is yet another desperate attempt to try and impute the existence of a scandal to the John Dramani Mahama-led government so that the decomposing elephant can seek to equalise,” he stated.
“There is no scandal. There will never be a scandal,” he emphasized.
The Deputy Minister insisted that the Mahama government remains committed to transparency and has no intention of shortchanging the Ghanaian public through the implementation of the free sanitary pads policy.