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The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has urged Ghanaians to make it an obligation to vote overwhelmingly for its flag bearer, John Dramani Mahama, on December 7 to ensure accountability which the party said had eluded the country’s governance system in the last seven years.
That, it said, was necessary to avoid subjecting the citizenry to further untold hardships following the disturbing revelations at the ongoing proceedings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament from the Auditor-General’s Report on Public Boards, Corporations and other statutory bodies for the period ended December 31, 2022.
The National Communications Officer of the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi, who made the call at a press conference in Accra yesterday, dubbed “Moment of Truth", said the PAC hearings brought to the fore “some very disturbing issues that border on corruption and abuse of public funds by certain state institutions and of particular interest to us is the latest revelation about the colossal expenditure made by the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) on the botched Agyapa Royalties deal".
During PAC's scrutiny of the Auditor-General’s Report on the MIIF accounts for the period ended December 31, 2022, the Chief Executive Officer of MIIF, Edward Nana Yaw Koranteng, disclosed that $12 million, equivalent to GH¢153 million, was spent on the botched Agyapa deal.
Further probing revealed that the amount was spent on logistics, payment of consultancy fees, rental of office space and the processes leading to the initial public offering (IPO) towards the listing of the “Agyapa” Royalties on the London Stock Exchange.
“The Ghanaian public was taken aback by these disclosures which add to the never-ending list of corruption scandals that continue to plague the nation,” Mr Gyamfi stated.
The NDC communications officer was of the view that the $12 million lost to sheer corruption could have been used to procure textbooks for basic schools, which have gone five years without curricula-based textbooks, after the introduction of the new curriculum.
“The money could have sufficed to pay the cost of several months of treatment for all kidney patients in Ghana, 19 of whom died painfully following the shameful closure of the Renal Dialysis Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for several months last year over government's GH¢ 4 million indebtedness,” he further suggested.
Mr Gyamfi explained that the disclosure did not come as a surprise because, “we are on record to have stated that the Agyapa Royalties deal was yet another phoney scheme cooked by the corrupt and nepotistic Akufo-Addo/Bawumia-led ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.”
He recalled that the NDC took a principled position to stand with the people of Ghana and kicked against the whole deal on grounds that the nation's mineral royalties had been “grossly undervalued under the opaque deal” and same was going to deny future governments and generations mineral revenues that were critical to the development of the country.
Consequently, the NDC Minority Caucus in Parliament staged a walkout when the deal was presented to Parliament for approval.
Sadly but surprisingly, he said, the NPP government used its numbers in Parliament to approve the deal in spite of the huge public outcry over the lack of value for money that the deal presented.
Mr Gyamfi stated that the NDC flag bearer, John Dramani Mahama, vowed to cancel the “fraudulent deal” if he won the 2020 general election, a position he had not changed.
He said additionally, some civil society organisations (CSOs), including the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) and the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), among others, kicked against the deal based on unsound arguments and alternative proposals.
Subsequently, he noted, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) established in its Corruption Risk Assessment Report that the deal was “fraught with procurement rigging, statutory breaches, potential money laundering and is inimical to the interest of the nation.”
“Eventually, the chilling details of the OSP’s report, coupled with sustained pressure from the NDC and civil society, compelled the President to shamefully beat a retreat and refer the deal he had already granted Executive approval for, back to Parliament for reconsideration, pending the 2020 general election,” the NDC communications officer stressed.
