Sole Commissioner Of Judgment Debt - A Trick Or A Treat?

I would be very surprised if at the end of it all, the national treasury benefits by a net increase of one (1) pesewa from the activities of the Office of Sole Commissioner - Judgement Debt (OSC-JD).

Poverty in the midst of plenty seems to be the Ghanaian's lot. Against this backdrop, Ghanaians must be very concerned about how their government spends their taxes and loans borrowed in their name. We should be asking searing questions about the direct social impact of some of the things our government chooses to spend money on. Every pesewa the government spends on a needless bureaucracy means one less pesewa on Health, Education, and Infrastructure.

I am not impressed one bit about the activities of the OSC-JD. And I will tell you why.

If one has an orchard of ripe, low-hanging mango fruits in one's back yard, it would indeed be mind-boggling if one travelled miles into the bush for the sole purpose of picking mangoes from trees growing in the wild. That is how cynical I am about the establishment up of the Office of Sole Commissioner of Judgement Debt (OSC-JD) by President Mahama.

We all know why Judgement Debts became a national issue in recent times. It was because there had been clear cases of fraud or irregularities in the payment of some judgement debts of gargantuan proportions by the Mills-Mahama administration. So serious were these irregularities that two consecutive Attorneys General were more or less axed from office. Apparently, one was axed for 'not looking deep enough into the hole' and the other for 'looking too deep into the hole'. Of course in the case of the former, officially there was a 'resignation' which was nothing more or less than an euphemism for something else.

At the time of the establishment of the office of Sole Commissioner, a number of institutions were supposedly attempting to unravel or at least were going through the motions of unravelling what had come to be known as the Judgement Debt saga. Some of these institutions were the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), The Law Courts, the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, and presumably the Auditor General and the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service. All of the above institutions are funded more or less by the State. Given that Ghana is a poor country, what was the overriding need to add to government expenditure by adding yet another bureaucracy? I see none.

Be that as it may, the hope of the average, long-suffering Ghanaian was that, mindful of the public purse, the overriding remit of the Sole Commissioner would be:

1. Stemming from the investigative efforts of other institutions, the OSC-JD would zero in on already-identified, questionable and/or fraudulent judgement debt payments.

2. Go to the law courts with the aim of retrieving payments fraudulently and/or erroneously paid out in the name of Judgement Debt.

3. Prosecute officials who might have been complicit in any fraudulent payments or who were willfully negligent in the discharge of their duties thereby leading to payments that should not have been made in the first place.

4. Identify loop-holes that might have been exploited for fraudulent judgement debt payments, and recommend ways of eliminating such loop-holes.

On Point 1, that apparently was not to be. The exercise is becoming academic and farcical. Not that I find that particularly surprising.

On Point 2: Is it not ironic that a private individual like former Attorney General Martin Amidu has successfully, on his own pesewa, won a judgement for the State against payees of judgement debt payments while Ghanaians are yet to see the financial benefit of the Office of the Sole Commissioner that is funded by the Tax Payer?

On Point 3: Volumes of evidence have been made available since 'Woyome and Waterville'. If officials fingered are still being treated like Olympic laureates, what is the likelihood that any corrupt or willfully-negligent official will be brought to book by the OSC-JD? If some people would be prosecuted at all, they would be 'the usual suspects', whoever they may be.

On Point 4: I thought the office of then Attorney General Ben Kumbuor came up with some recommendations at the cabinet level. Perhaps the Sole Commissioner may want to tell us how those recommendations Ben Kumbuor prescribed for - and was accepted by - the cabinet is working or is not working.

So I ask, what is the value of this Office of Sole Commissioner - Judgement Debt to Mother Ghana? Is the value only in political and or partisan currency?

By the setting up of the Office of Sole Commissioner, is Mother Ghana being given a treat or is being played a trick? Your guess is as good as mine.

Gilbert A Gyimah, CPA (USA)