Cut the Agyapa Deal Noise and Follow the Judgment-Debt Gravy Train, Domelevo

It is rather amusing that nearly all the key operatives of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and their passionately partisan sympathizers have suddenly latched onto the Agyapa Mineral Heritage Investment Deal Mega-Scam which, by the way, according to “His Unofficial Excellency,” Mr. Gabrel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko, the notorious Akufo-Addo cousin, was actually abortively hatched by the operatives of the Atta-Mills-led ragtag regime of the National Democratic Congress (2009-2013). It may be recalled that Mr. Otchere-Darko nonchalantly made the foregoing known when the Kenneth Ofori-Atta-engineered version of the Agyapa Mega-Scam was opportunely and auspiciously exposed by the Akufo-Addo-appointed Independent Special Prosecutor, Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, in the runup to the 2020 General Election.

Now, what is fascinating here is the fact that long before the Agyapa Racket became the prime subject of national debate and conniption or outrage, there was the Atta-Mills- and the Betty Mould-Iddrisu-engineered and Alfred Agbesi Woyome-fronted GH₡51.2 million Mega-Heist, recently further given forensically credible credence by Mr. Amidu, the Atta-Mills-appointed Attorney-General and Justice Minister at the time. According to Martin Amidu, it was his steely determination not to let the Atta-Mills Posse literally get away with murder that culminated in the summary expulsion of Ghana’s longest-serving Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice from the Atta-Mills’ cabinet and the effective proscription and persecution of the Frafra native from the Upper-East Region (See Martin ABK Amidu’s Tamale UDS-sponsored 2024 Harmattan School Lecture Presentation.

We also need to promptly and poignantly underscore the fact that at the time that the Woyome Mega-Heist came to the limelight or national attention, Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo, the former Auditor-General, was the number two or three top official in the Auditor-General’s Department. Yet, this vociferous NDC-sympathizing political activist is nowhere on record to have called for the sort of official accountability that he is presently demanding of the Akufo-Addo Administration (See “Agyapa deal: Ghana is moving from taxation to robbery; the system is tolerating irregularities — Former Auditor-General” Modernghana.com 3/18/24).

There are a few relevant questions that ought to be asked Mr. Domelevo here, not the least of which regards the fact of when the Kumasi-born Anlo-Ewe/Ayigbe-Ewe native became aware of the fact that the leaderships of previous successive governments had routinely been taking Ghanaian taxpayers to the cleaners, as New Yorkers are wont to say. In other words, would Mr. Domelevo also argue that, somehow, the Atta-Mills and the Betty Mould-Iddrisu-hatched GH₡51.2 million Woyome-fronted Mega-Heist was any less of a veritable act of robbery than the Ofori-Atta and the Otchere-Darko-rigged abortive Agyapa Mineral Heritage Investment Mega-Scam, whose loss of an estimated $12 million (USD), the critic claims “is no small money” for which Ghanaian taxpayers, that is, literally each and every one of us, is liable and must therefore demand strict accountability?

Put in simple or plainer terms, precisely what amount of the official looting of our National Treasury and, by extension, the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money, would Mr. Domelevo consider to be “small money” or chum change, as New Yorkers are wont to say? It goes without saying that if any laudable judgment call for official fiscal accountability by influential and fairly well-respected public figures like our former Auditor-General is to be taken seriously, at least one expects such judgment call to be morally balanced, logically impartial and legally objective without any ideologically unsettling hints of prejudice. We have not yet even begun talking about the globally infamous Mills-Mahama-hatched STX Scandal, the epic and the economically catastrophic failure of which resulted in an estimated loss of some $250 million (USD) to a nondescript South Korean building construction firm. Now, are we talking about the same Ghana into which Sincerely Yours was born just a little over 60 years ago?

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
March 18, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]