I’m grossly disappointed in Education Minister; several scandals under his watch – Sulemana Braimah

Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), has expressed grave disappointment in Education Minister Dr. Osei Yaw Adutwum over recent corruption scandals at the Ministry of Education.

Mr. Braimah who had earlier supported the Education Minister’s appointment, says he is now disappointed.

In a tweet on Thursday, July 27, the MFWA director noted that the Minister sits idle while corruption happens at his ministry.

"I'm among those who hailed the appointment of Mr. Adutwum as the substantive Minister for Education. But over time, I have become grossly disappointed with his performance and the scandals under his watch. From School placement fraud to this one,” he tweeted.

Mr Braimah's comments come after investigations by The Fourth Estate revealed that the Ministry of Education spent GH₵2 million on a COVID-19 tracker app in October 2021 that was never deployed or used.

The app was intended to track COVID-19 cases in junior and senior high schools across Ghana, even though the government had already launched a national COVID-19 tracker app in April 2020.

The education ministry's app was created under the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP), a 5-year initiative funded by the World Bank, UK's Department for International Development and the Global Partnership for Education.

An audit by the Ghana Audit Service found that despite being designed and developed, the education ministry's app was never actually deployed.

The auditors said the waste of public funds on the unused app and related IT infrastructure worth GH₵16 million bought under GALOP "could result in waste of government scarce resources."

The report blamed the failure to deploy the tools on "lack of consultation and coordination between the procuring Agencies (Ministry of Education and Ghana Library Authority and the user Agency (Ghana Education Service)."

Meanwhile, under Dr Adutwum's administration, the Education Ministry has reportedly been embroiled in a school placement fraud scandal as revealed earlier by the Fourth Estate.