Fatima Abubakar says, “Hawa Koomson is one of the most capable women I’ve ever met.”

Amid widespread outrage over the national award that President Akufo-Addo gave her, Information Minister Fatima Abubakar has vigorously defended Mavis Hawa Koomson, the departing Member of Parliament for the Central Region’s Awutu Senya East seat.

Speaking to the media on this year’s State Honour Awards, she said that Hawa Koomson is among the most capable people she has met in Akufo-Addo’s administration and that she is deserving of recognition.

She asserted, “You can check her track record from every sector she has worked in, and you will see that Honourable Hawa Koomson is one of the most competent women I have ever encountered.”
“Having excelled in her work as a minister in those public institutions, she was awarded in the public sector category and was duly nominated by the people she worked with,” she continued.

Hawa Koomson, who held two ministries in the Akufo-Addo administration, received an award, but Ghanaians have strongly reacted negatively to her actions during the general elections in 2020 and 2024, when she allegedly fired firearms and caused other disturbances that killed people in her constituency.

She was chastised by Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who claimed that because of the scandals that surrounded her, she did not deserve the honour.

The Information Minister countered, “I say bad news sells in Ghana.” People label her as someone who is genuinely dangerous in the eyes of the public after saying, “Oh, we heard that she pulled a gun.”

She enquired as to whether carrying a gun in Ghana was illegal. According to her, there needs to be consensus if the claim was that Ghanaians do not believe that ministers should receive recognition for their efforts.