Kwamena Ahwoi Lacks Credibility on Double-Salary Saga

Professor Kwamena Ahwoi, together with his siblings, notably Messrs. Ato Ahwoi and Kwesi Ahwoi, are prime symbols of the terror-charged reign of impunity that characterized the Rawlings-led junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), and before the latter, the extortionate and sanguinary Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). To be certain, I would not be surprised if the Ahwoi Brothers turned to have played a major role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Hilla (Babini) Limann-led People’s National Party (PNP). What we are talking about here regards the key operatives of a self-righteous political organization, namely, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), that has made naked robbery and extortion of the hardworking Ghanaian taxpayer a prime plank of its political agenda, even as these NDC operatives hold their main political opponents to the Rawlings-fangled mantra of “Probity, Transparency, Accountability and Justice,” a credo that has been used to cause the summary execution of tens of hundreds of responsible and decent Ghanaian citizens by firing squad.

The summary execution of the cabinet members of the Acheampong and FWK Akuffo juntas, for merely and legitimately taking out housing loans, punitively branded as “corruption,” is a striking case in point. In this instance, the likes of Air-Vice Marshall Yaw Boakye and Commander Amedume were callously and savagely executed on the grounds that their legitimately contracted housing loans had not been paid on schedule, thereby compounding the abject state of rank corruption in the country. Prof. Ahwoi’s call for the double-salary theft of the Mahama cabinet appointees who also served as Members of Parliament to be casually treated as a clerical error lacks merit, because it rudely attempts to flagrantly decriminalize or normalize a patent act of criminality. It also insults the intelligence of Ghanaians old enough to remember the bloody heydays of the AFRC-PNDC Reign-of-Terror. The fact of the matter is that the criminal suspects involved knew fully well that they were being paid salaries that they clearly did not statutorily deserve and deliberately made absolutely no attempt, whatsoever, each and every one of them, to have such grievous, and felonious, anomaly promptly rectified.

We are told that in some cases, such illegal overpayments went on for more than two years, or half the tenure of former President John Dramani Mahama. It is of absolutely no moment or significance whether these NDC-MPs who also doubled as Mahama cabinet appointees were paid as “Article 71 Office Holders” or “Article Zero Office Holders.” An incontestable crime involving the deliberate embezzlement of the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money has been established here by the Accountant-General’s Department and must be envisaged and treated as such. The fact of whether Prof. Ahwoi was a member of the Presidential Committee on Emoluments (PCE) that investigated some salary anomalies and irregularities and made recommendations for systemic streamlining is totally immaterial here, especially since Prof. Ahwoi also claims personally to have been fully aware that the timing and periodic scheduling of the salaries and emoluments of these political appointees has been systemically out of kilter at least since 1993, at the inception of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.

The Akufo-Addo petitioner also claims that roughly as many of these government employees have often ended up being as overpaid as they have been underpaid. Now, I seriously doubt this rather disingenuous submission put forth by Prof. Ahwoi, in view of the fact that at the end of every parliamentary term, these same Article 71 employees pay themselves the most humongous of “gratuities,” which many a Ghanaian citizen has been bitterly complaining about for a generation now, all to absolutely no avail. We also have the globally infamous Woyome Heist, in which key cabinet appointees of the Mills-Mahama government criminally conspired with a well-known major financier of the National Democratic Congress, namely, Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, to literally take the Ghanaian taxpayer to the cleaners to the whopping tune of GHȻ 51.2 Million. Indeed, even as I write, nearly 10 years later, the NDC stalwarts, together with their veritably fraudulent front man, have yet to reimburse the Ghanaian taxpayer. The last time that we heard of him, Mr. Woyome was in Tanzania trying to petition the so-called African Court of Human Rights to allow him to keep his loot. And so one can only sneer at Prof. Ahwoi’s rather cavalier and insolent call for these NDC thieves who have, literally, been caught with their pants down to return their loots, without interest and/or punitive damages.

But what is even more significant to observe here is the fact that Mr. Woyome has categorically stated that he divvied up his loot with the front-row leaders of the National Democratic Congress. In sum, my contention here is that the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress have a well-established criminal track-record of robbing the Ghanaian taxpayer with impunity. And this ought to be immediately halted by the Akufo-Addo Administration, if the latter is really serious about weaning Ghana off the unenviable status of being a net recipient of foreign aid, a progressive policy agenda which, not surprisingly, these NDC kleptocrats have taken to ridiculing on a daily basis.

Calling for the criminal probing of these NDC salary scam-artists could not be more arrogant and preposterous (See “Kwamena Ahwoi Appeals to Akufo-Addo to Stop Probe into ‘Needless Double Salary’ Saga” CitiNewsRoom.com / Modernghan.com 5/8/18), because the logic behind such self-serving appeal that, somehow, stealing from the Ghanaian taxpayer is a private matter between “an employer and his employee” is one that only career political knaves like the Number Two Ahwoi Brother could concoct. Prof. Ahwoi should try retailing such obscene and scurrilous poppycock to Ghanaian civil servants who have been sentenced to prison terms for the embezzlement of public funds. But, of course, what really irked me more than all else was the rather thinly veiled suggestive threat that there will be hell to pay down the pike, if President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo goes ahead and cause these NDC thieves to be rigorously prosecuted.

If, indeed, Prof. Ahwoi is convinced that being separately paid by the Parliamentary Service (PS) and the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) invariably causes payment discrepancies, then why is the petitioner insistent on having the salaries of these MPs and cabinet appointees continued to be paid via the same defective system? I smell a rat here (See “Don’t Criminalize Double Salary Saga – Prof. Ahwoi to Akufo-Addo” Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 5/7/18). And, by the way, who told Prof. Ahwoi that these NDC thieves and criminal suspects have superior citizenship rights than any other Ghanaian?

And if, indeed, a similar problem occurred under former President John Agyekum-Kufuor – one hopes that the same does not occur under the watch of President Akufo-Addo – as Prof. Ahwoi claims, then it is incumbent on the plaintiff to produce any concrete forensically sustainable evidence in which Kufuor cabinet appointees double-dipped for even three to six months, let alone two years, as was the case of the Mahama appointees? We are here talking about criminal suspects and unprincipled and abjectly corrupt leaders who have absolutely no right to be representing any constituencies of responsible and law-abiding Ghanaian citizens in our august National Assembly.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 9, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]