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Former President John Dramani Mahama has refuted claims that he was trying to dent the image of the country when he showed the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election videos to the diplomatic corps.

Mr Mahama has been slammed for some of the issues he raised when he met with members of the diplomatic corps. 

At the meeting, he showed them videos and pictures of the violence which occurred during the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election on January 31, 2019.

Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo reacting to this, described him as 'unpatriotic' and accused him of painting Ghana 'black'.

“To say the least, this is unpatriotic and shameful. It is because if he gathered Ghanaians, call it the academia or Ghanaian professionals or Ghanaian businessmen and he talked about matters of concern to him, I’ll have no problem. He’s a former Head of State and therefore a very important opinion leader, but to gather foreigners and try to paint Ghana black is just not acceptable,” the Senior Minister said.

The Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah at a press briefing said: "the Government of Ghana will this week put the diplomatic committee in Ghana on formal notice that former President John Dramani Mahama peddled several falsehoods and sought to undermine the authority of the state."

However, reacting to this in an interaction on Radio Gold, Friday, the former President said: "when I showed the videos to the international community, [they say] I’m painting Ghana black. Ayawaso West Wuogon is black paint. There is nothing pink or yellow or green or white about it . . . . You cannot colour it in any other colour . . . I didn’t manufacture them  . . . they are all over social media. I was getting calls from Nigeria and other places . . .  when you see some of those videos it looks like Afghanistan, it doesn’t look like Ghana. It looks like some war zone. You see somebody with an axe hitting somebody on the back."