'Bribe' Ministers Must Go

David Tetteh Assumeng

PRESIDENT ATTA Mills has come under a suffocating pressure to prove his claim that he is committed to fighting corruption.

This follows the call, yesterday, by National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP for Shai-Osudoku, , for the immediate resignation of government officials mentioned in a London court as having pocketed almost half a million pound sterling of dirty bribe money from Mabey & Johnson (M&J), a UK construction firm.

The bold call from the NDC MP, a cadre and darling boy of Jerry Rawlings, NDC founder, comes at a time when civil society groups are claiming that President Mills' apparent lack of will power to call for the resignation of the said officials in his government may be because he was a direct beneficiary of the said bribe money and that his 2000 campaign to become president was partly financed with it.

Yesterday's bombshell from David Assumeng coincides with a call from Nana Akufo-Addo, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate for the 2008 election, that in other jurisdictions, the government officials implicated in the scandal were asked to step aside for a thorough investigation to be conducted and that the same should happen in Ghana, especially when many Ghanaians are expressing this view.

This is the first time Nana Addo is wading into the M&J scandal and according to him, the matter is a straightforward one and the wheel needs not be re-invented; in that in Ghana, it is the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the law enforcement agencies that have the constitutional mandate to investigate allegations of corruption against government officials.

He however begged to hold his comments and in the meantime wait for President Mills to take a decision on the matter based on what advice he gets from the Minister for Justice and Attorney General, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, who just returned from a fact-finding mission in the UK where she was reported to have met with officials of the British Serious Fraud Office in London.

Hon. Assumeng, in firing the salvos, yesterday explained that the NDC was voted into power on the catch phrase of probity and accountability and the continuous presence of the said government officials was a direct indictment on the moral authority of the Mills Administration.

He described himself as a former cadre and activist of the defunct Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) and maintained that since what is good for the goose is good for the gander, Dr. Sipa Yankey and a host of other government officials named in the scandal should not wait for the President to push them out, but must on their own resign, apparently referring to the former Minister for Sports, Muhammed Muntaka Mubarak, who abandoned his Ministerial position after he was found to have been involved in suspected fraudulent practices.

Meanwhile, DAILY GUIDE has gathered at press time that the Attorney General was in a closed door meeting with President Mills over her findings in the UK and that she did not find anything different from what the London Serious Fraud Office gave to the Southwark Court where officials of M&J themselves confessed that they indeed gave the said bribes to the Ghanaian government officials and that there are bank accounts and statements as evidence.

The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), a pressure group, yesterday told a news conference in Accra that President Mills must come clean and purge himself of his suspected involvement so as to save Ghana the embarrassment the country is facing both locally and internationally over the bribery scandal.

The group noted that some of the said government officials are currently the right-hand men of President Atta Mills and the UK court also found out that the contract sums M&J won in Ghana were in many instances over-bloated while some of the bribe money directly went to national officers of the NDC, the political party which Atta Mills rode to power, and also serving as Vice President of Ghana during the time the bribes were being paid to the said government officials.

“AFAG would not be surprised if President Mills fails to act because as Vice-Presidential candidate for the NDC in the 1996 elections and later as candidate in the 2000 election, his campaign benefitted from the largesse of M&J.

“It can be rationally explained the hesitation from the Seat of Government to take the bull by the horns by sacking those implicated and commencing prosecution; it may be that the President is aware of the consequences should he take such actions.

“We ask President Mills to cast the first stone if he is without blemish in this matter. Let us not forget the high moral standards our President has claimed for himself through the numerous statements and how he has portrayed himself as an angel.

For him to fail to take decisive action would tell a lot about his commitment to fighting corruption,” AFAG noted in a press statement read by the group's spokesperson, Anthony Karbo.

The group described as “laughable” the decision by President Mills to send the Minister of Justice and Attorney General to the UK to investigate the findings of the Southwark Crown Court and the confessions of the M&J officials.

Anthony Karbo explained that apart from the fact that Ghana's Attorney General has no jurisdiction to question any institutionalised body in the UK, it is most illogical that being a member of this government, she would dig up any dirt to indict her colleague government officials and the President for that matter.

AFAG stated that even if the Attorney General was to go to the UK, she should have been accompanied by the Commissioner of CHRAJ, the quasi judicial body that has the constitutional mandate to investigate allegations of corruption against government officials.

“At least, the President should have composed a team of independent bodies for the UK mission; at least selected personnel from the Serious Fraud Office, CHRAJ and both the Majority and Minority leaders in Parliament should have been asked by the President to accompany the Attorney General to the UK,” the group added.

The  names of Health Minister Dr. George Sipa Yankey; Dr. Ato Quarshie, former Road and Highways Minister; Amadu Seidu, Minister of State at the Presidency; Kwame Paprah and Edward Lord-Attivor former Chairman of the Inter-city Transport Corporation have been mentioned as being among the NDC big shots who received the bribe money.

The corrupt deals were found to have been perpetrated between the years 1994 and 1999 when NDC-founder Jerry John Rawlings was President of Ghana and  Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, wife of Jerry Rawlings and Baba Kamara, Ghana's  High Commissioner designate to Nigeria have all been mentioned in the scandal.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo