Ranking Member on Parliament’s Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, Bernard Ahiafor, has blamed President Akufo-Addo for the undue delay in concluding stakeholder engagements on the 2021 Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill.

According to him, the Committee has not wrapped up its work because of the 2022 State of the Nation Address to be delivered by the President.

Mr Ahiafor made this known to JoyNews while discussing an upcoming hearing the Committee would be hosting.

Interacting with Kwesi-Parker Wilson, he said: "we should have finished this but for the fact that we thought the President will deliver the State of the Nation Address earlier and once a message of the state of the nation is delivered, then we will have to debate that particular message and during the debate, it would not be possible for us to be having frequent committee meetings. So, we have suspended the stakeholder engagement on the LGBTQ hoping that the President will come and deliver a statement on the state of the nation.

Other than that, by now, we would have finished everything. We thought that early this month, there would be at least a message on the state of the nation."

He explained that proceeding with plans would have proven futile as members of the Committee would not be present to participate in discussions.

Mr. Ahiafor indicated that for 2 to 3 weeks, "we have not scheduled a stakeholder engagement due to a foreseeability of the President coming to deliver a state of the nation."

He noted that because the Committee is not certain of the specific date President Akufo-Addo will deliver the address, "we have decided to continue our stakeholder engagement and we are left with the last sitting to call it a day."

President Akufo-Addo was to deliver the 2022 State of the Nation Address on Thursday, March 3, 2022, but the Business Committee in Parliament said the address had to be postponed.

Speaking on the floor of the House on Friday, the Deputy Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, noted that a new date would be communicated soon.

Meanwhile, the Ranking Member has indicated that the Committee may be meeting the last group- Rightify Ghana, a group affiliated with the LGBTQ+ community will have a closed-door meeting with the Committee.

According to reports, the group requested this arrangement to protect its members.