Resistance to Agyapa Deal Came from both Parliament and the OSP, Not Just CSOs

Know Essuman, described by the local Ghanaian media as a Legal Counsel to the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, can only fool himself into supposing that the fiercest opposition and resistance to the ill-fated and infamous Agyapa Mineral Investment Racket, allegedly orchestrated and led by Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister, and Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the Senior Adviser to the President, and Mr. Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko, sardonically described by the media and his bosom friend and former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama, as the De-Facto Prime Minister of Ghana, in much the same manner that Mr. Stanislav Xoese Dogbe, the Mahama-appointed Presidential Communications Director, was also sarcastically described as the substantive President of the Mahama Government by the now-Speaker Alban S K Bagbin, with the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, being a mere Presidential Figurehead of his own government.

There was, of course, Mr. Charles Adu-Boahen, the Akufo-Addo-expelled former Minister of State for Finance, in the mix. Actually, the fiercest opposition to the deservedly abortive Agyapa Mega-Heist came from Ghana’s Parliament and the extant Akufo-Addo-appointed Independent Special Prosecutor, Mr. Martin A B K Amidu. It was the latter who publicly and irately exposed the fact that the originally crafted Agyapa Mineral Investment Deal, as it was then called, was expressly aimed at siphoning a huge portion of the profits that were expected to accrue from this shady offshore transaction into the private bank accounts of a South African-based shell company that had been deliberately established for the purpose by Mr. Ofori-Atta and an alleged native South African friend and/or business associate.

For those of our readers who may not know what it is, a “shell company” is a bogus or fraudulent entrepreneurial entity that expressly exists for the sole purpose of scamming unsuspecting citizens and taxpayers. Thus, to fully appreciate the absurdity of the snarky remark allegedly made by Lawyer Essuman, to the effect that critics of the Agyapa Royalties Deal, so-called, abjectly lacked a basic understanding of the details of the deal and had, somehow, been grossly misled by the leaderships of some Civil Society Groups, we need to examine the visceral or primal reaction of the two leading principals of this scam and even the reaction of the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, who clearly appeared to have been blindsided by the aforementioned authors of the fraudulent Agyapa Scheme, in much the same manner that he had been smashingly embarrassed by the equally fraudulent authors of the purportedly lucratively renegotiated AMERI-DEAL Scam which the extant Energy Minister, Mr. Kyerematen Boakye Agyarko, it turns out, had outrageously cooked up and now conveniently and vindictively claims to have been mischievously masterminded by Messrs. Samuel Atta-Akyea, also a relative of the President and former Minister for Works and Housing, if memory serves Yours Sincerely accurately; and, of course, the conspiratorially ubiquitous Mr. Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko (See “Ignorant Critics of Agyapa Deal Now Silent after ECOWAS Court’s Verdict – Akufo-Addo’s Lawyer” Modernghana.com 8/17/23).

For starters, many of us were deeply and almost disconsolately scandalized to discover that the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice was so heavily reliant on his cabinet appointees and blood relatives that he curiously seemed to be shockingly clueless about the decidedly rankly corrupt activities that were rampantly and riotously going on around him, in terms of how his ministers and some of his most senior executive appointees were carrying on with the Sacred Business and the mandate of the Sovereign Ghanaian People. This was gapingly borne out by his visible expression of utter bewilderment vis-à-vis the round rejection of the Agyapa Scam by Parliament the first time around. He would rather naively demand of his point men and women, it seemed, in the august House precisely what finishing touches or minor tweaks and revisions needed to be effected before the Agyapa Investment Royalties Scam could be made whole or more contractually coherent, acceptable and ratifiable.

What was even more scandalous was the predictable knee-jerk response that Mr. Otchere-Darko imperiously volleyed at some of the most caustic critics of this veritable and patent act of heinous criminality. Which was that the previous late President John Evans Atta-Mills-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had, in fact, been the very first to attempt to so rudely and criminally mortgage the mineral wealth of the country and the futures of several generations of Ghanaian citizens and residents to an offshore company, somewhere in Europe, if memory serves this writer correctly. In other words, quite predictably, the short- and long-term merits and demerits of the Agyapa Mineral Investment Deal was the last and the least bit among the worries, if any at all, of this Akufo-Addo first cousin but the mere fact that his cronies among the ranks of the present main opposition National Democratic Congress, including the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “European Airbus Payola Ford Expedition” Dramani Mahama, had also attempted to mortgage the futures of our children and grandchildren for generations to come to the highest bidder at this time.

If, indeed, Lawyer Essuman is really interested in educatively curing any of the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo Government and Presidency caught up in the preceding scandal of their withering “basic lack of understanding” of precisely how not to ignobly and thievishly conduct the Sacred Business of the Sovereign People of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, then it absolutely goes without saying that the very first patient in dire need of such mental and psychological retuning is none other than His Excellency, Prime Minister Gabriel “Gabby” Asare-Otchere-Darko, and not the leaders or the leaderships of such unimpeachably patriotic, at least in this particular instance, Civil Society Organizations as Transparency International (TI) and Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII).

Then also, the Akufo-Addo counsel is obligated to explain to the Ghanaian citizenry, most especially Ghanaian taxpayers, precisely why Mr. Ofori-Atta was widely reported to have promised to scrap or promptly liquidate the aforesaid South African-based shell company into which he had intended to siphon an unspecified but presumably significant portion of any profits accruing from the auspiciously aborted Agyapa Mineral Investment Mega-Heist. I am also quite certain that the ECOWAS Court’s verdict will not be the last word on whether the so-called Agyapa Mineral Investment Deal is implemented or not.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
August 24, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]