Thomas Kusi Boafo Says Mahama Flagstaff House Was an Auto Dealership – Part 1

Nobody is yet talking about it, although a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Thomas Kusi Boafo, the Minister for Public-Sector Reform, appeared at a television-cum-radio station with some documents that he claimed were the paper trail incontrovertibly indicating that the Mahama Presidency, or the erstwhile Flagstaff House, doubled as an auto dealership. Mr. Kusi Boafo also vowed to extensively publicize this Mahama-supervised and/or conducted racket, if President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo or any of his relevant assigns either refused or egregious failed to take up this most serious matter for the necessary and requisite action.

By the latter reference, the Public-Sector Reform Minister clearly meant that he intended to ensure that the key players and/or culprits in the aforementioned racket were made to face the full punitive brunt of the law. So far, though, not much, by way of social ripples, have either been sighted or sonically been heard about this story in the media. I have decided to raise this issue for the second time in two days, because Dr. Clement Apaak, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Builsa-South, in the Upper-East Region, has been waxing self-righteous over what the former social activist turned Mahama Presidential Staffer, and now a politician, calls the “One Day, One Fraud” Akufo-Addo Presidency the vertiginous flurry of whose fraudulent scandals is “jamming up his brain” (See “1D 1F Turn One Day One Fraud Under Akufo-Addo – Apaak” Modernghana.com 9/7/19).

I bring up the “Kusi Boafo Smoking-Gun” now because as a well-paid and highly placed northern-descended Presidential Staffer, a significant criterion for appointments under the Mahama regime, Dr. Apaak may very well have participated in this Flagstaff House-Dubai/Gulf-States racket that allegedly involved the importation of vehicles, largely SUVs, with the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money via some local auto dealerships at the going market prices for use by Mahama regime operatives, whose prices were then drastically reduced from 2-percent to about 10-percent of the original market prices after only about six months of delivery and use, and then these same vehicles were sold back to the same local auto dealerships that imported these vehicles, who then re-inflated the prices of the same vehicles to approximately their original going market prices and then resold on the general local market and the humongous margin of profits divvied up between these auto dealers and operatives at the Mahama Flagstaff House.

Personally, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the level of official corruption alleged to have taken grips of a remarkable number of the operatives of the Akufo-Addo Administration is not any significantly worse or higher than what had prevailed under the previous Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), for only one ready example. What we may actually be witnessing here and presently, is the relatively more transparency under the post Right-to-Information Akufo-Addo era, that has enabled the media and even desperate and frustrated party insiders easy access to information that might not have been so readily available and accessible under the previous Mahama regime. But there is also another critical difference here; and it is the fact that the much-touted rank corruption and all, the Akufo-Addo Administration is, far and away, more progressive, policy wise, and results oriented, at least thus far, than any other previous Fourth-republican government.

We need to also look at the performance record of the previous Mahama regime vis-à-vis the felling of the endangered arboreal species of rosewood before any of us angrily and self-righteously proceed to condemn Forest Commission operatives of the Akufo-Addo government for flagrantly breaking the law covering the protection and preservation of this endangered tree species, by intemperately accusing the likes of Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie, the CEO of the Forestry Commission, of facilitating the felling of rosewoods and then deviously but unsuccessfully attempting to cover up the same. If, indeed, as Dr. Apaak claims, the man popularly known as Sir John ever approached the Builsa-South’s NDC-MP to help the former collusively cover up his trail, then it cannot, of course, be gainsaid that such overture may very well be based on the sordid record that Dr. Apaak himself and his associates may have established in this sector of our national economy. After all, isn’t it often said that “It takes one to know one”?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 7, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]