Franklin Cudjoe Raises Some Genuine Concerns on Kelni GVG Deal

I don’t know whether he was just being facetious or obnoxiously stereotypical and even collectively self-denigrative, when the Founder-President of the IMANI-Africa policy think-tank, Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, described the $ 89 Million contractual telecommunications monitoring deal recently struck between the Government of Ghana and the Haiti-based Kelni GVG firm as one that was rooted in “juju” or voodoo, in derisive Reaganesque and Bushian mainstream American political parlance (See “Kelni GVG Deal Rooted in ‘Juju’ – Franklin Cudjoe” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 5/23/18).

Whatever the case may be, he ought to know that such disdainful characterization is inescapably laced with racist connotative undertones, whether the IMANI-Africa boss realizes the same or not. Even so, Mr. Cudjoe raises some genuine concerns which ought to have been considered and even vigorously debated in Parliament prior to the deal’s being signed in December 2017. For starters, the quite influential policy wonk aptly observes that similar contracts signed by the Mills-Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 2010 and, again, under the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur regime of the National Democratic Congress, with Subah Infosolutions and Afriwave, do not appear to have cost-effectively served their purpose.

And so it would have been savvy for the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to have initiated a public discussion or even a parliamentary debate regarding the question of why the present administration regarded the Kelni GVG contract to be more cost-effective than the two previous contracts, just as President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recently did when he legally and legitimately submitted the Enhanced Military and Security Cooperation Agreement (EMSCA) between Ghana and the United States to Parliament for deliberation and ratification, the high wave of vacuous hypocritical protestations from some key operatives of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress notwithstanding.

Indeed, it is for the preceding reasons that one simply cannot accept the rather cavalier and scandalously lame response from Mr. George Andah, the Deputy Communications Minister, that Mr. Cudjoe goofed in vehemently protesting against the Kelni GVG deal because the IMANI-Africa think-tanker does not appear to have availed himself of all the necessary details of the deal to enable him to peremptorily presume the same to have been both grossly ill-conceived and executed (See “Franklin Cudjoe’s Life Is in Danger Over Crusade on GVG Deal” CitiNewsRoom.com / Modernghana.com 5/26/18).

Of course, one expects Mr. Cudjoe to have availed himself of all the necessary details of the agreement before presuming to volley thunderous grenades across the bow of the Akufo-Addo-piloted and Jubilee House-steered ship of state. But it equally goes without saying that the onus of proof of the cost-effectiveness of the Kelni GVG deal squarely rests with the Government, and not the IMANI-Africa think-tankers. You see, the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) was resoundingly voted into power primarily because Ghanaian citizens were tired and fed up with doing politics the old way, not to cynically pursue policy matters in the vapid and jaded goose-and-gander way.

It is therefore on the latter count that I beg to vehemently disagree with Mr. Andah, the Deputy Communications Minister, that it was rather the government, and not the IMANI-Africa think-tankers, that goofed in not effectively and comprehensively educating the taxpaying public on the full details of the Kelni GVG contract, especially on the critical question of what makes the latest contract a remarkable improvement on the previous ones.

Now, on a side note, but hardly a lighter one, I solemnly call on our national security agencies, in particular the authorities of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), to take the alleged death threats against Mr. Cudjoe very seriously by promptly tracking down and bringing to book any potential assailants or would-be assailants of Mr. Cudjoe. By the same token, of course, Mr. Cudjoe has a bounden obligation to himself and his family and, indeed, the rest of the nation at large, to ensure that he does not unwisely play himself like a martyrdom-hungry crusader into the hands of any psychopaths seeking to criminally eviscerate his inalienable democratic right to freely express himself on signal or major national issues.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 26, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]