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19.12.2018 Feature Article

Ablakwa’s Figures Do Not Add Up, But Government Must Come Clean

Ablakwas Figures Do Not Add Up, But Government Must Come Clean
19.12.2018 LISTEN

Reports that the Government of Ghana is in the process of purchasing a building in Norway, to be used as part of an Embassy or Chancery it intends to establish in the offing in that northern European country, at over four times the prevailing market price, needs to be promptly investigated (See “$ 15 Million Norway Building Stinks [Reeks?] of Fraud” Modernghana.com 12/18/18). Nevertheless, I have a feeling that there is far more to the story than has allegedly been unearthed by the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority. Then also, there is something at once weird – to speak much less about the downright annoying – and bizarre about the key operatives of a previous government that spent nearly an equal amount of money building an abandoned Vice-President’s edifice right here in the Democratic Republic of Ghana.

In other words, while there may, indeed, be absolutely no smoke without fire, nevertheless, the irreparably and irredeemably tainted credibility of the major former appointees of the erstwhile Mahama regime further complicates matters. I am not here to blindly defend the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) at all costs – for God knows that the NPP is replete with its own fair share of corrupt scam-artists; nevertheless, the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority needs to present the general public with far more credible figures vis-à-vis the alleged intended purchase. For starters, the NDC’s Parliamentary Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, cannot, on the one hand, tell Ghanaians that the building the Government intends to purchase was on the market for a diddly $ 3.5 Million just last year, relatively speaking, of course, and then turn round and within the same rhetorical breath tell Ghanaians that the Akufo-Addo Government is scandalously intent on buying the same house for $ 15 Million; and then tell us a moment later that the price of the same house has been inflated by some $ 8 Million.

If the latter figure has validity, then some rascally politician clearly seems to be trying to fiddle with the original figure of $ 3.5 Million. What the preceding further means is that perhaps the original market price of the building in question is $ 7 Million, for when one subtracts the purportedly inflated figure of $ 8 Million from $ 15 Million, $ 7 Million is the figure that a good Arithmetician arrives at, and not $ 3.5 Million. Like the old proverbial story of the “touchy-feely” blindmen and the elephant or pachyderm of our middle school grammar book, the NDC Parliamentary Minority may very well be in possession of such significant or smoking-gun documents on this Norwegian purchase, except that their desperate zeal to scoring cheap political points, as it were, has blighted their ability to effectively and objectively interpret and/or make credible sense of the evidence which these infamous “create, loot and share” kleptocrats claim to be in possession of.

You see, Ghanaians have witnessed too many contractual and purchasing agreements that have been so poorly negotiated, going back to the tenure of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) government, that the latest Norwegian chancery-purchasing deal, should it turn out to have been poorly negotiated, without any savvy value-for-money due diligence having been conducted, would be just another characteristically daft contractual compact. Now, we need to get serious as a nation. It is quite possible that a Norwegian transactional insider who did not like how Ghanaian public officials were going about the purchase of the real-estate property, leaked the purportedly evidentiary document that the NDC Parliamentary Minority claims to be in possession of. I am also thinking about what happened to the “diplomatic” tract of land granted the Government of Ghana by the Pakistani government, which some two or three other countries were reportedly looking snap up, and which not very long ago, Ms. Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, our Minister for Foreign Affairs, informed us that Ghana was too strapped for cash to take up and develop into prime or high-end property.

I sincerely don’t want to come this invidiously low, but there may very well be a psychological problem with our leaders that apparently makes them envisage every transactional opportunity for doing good for the country, in terms of a prime opportunity for ripping off or scamming the Ghanaian taxpayer, at least the relatively few Ghanaian citizens who, we are told, are conscientious enough to religiously attend to their tax obligations.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 18, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]

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