Be Careful of What You Are Asking For…

I have yet to read the full details of the alleged conniption of the Parliamentary Majority Speaker, Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, about the decision of the Parliamentary Minority, led by Mr. Inusah Fuseini, the Ranking Member on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, to have Parliament recalled from recess to deliberate on the just-released report on the Electricity Company of Ghana and the Power Distribution Services (ECG-PDS) Affair, entailing some major contractual breaches, that prompted President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to suspend the collaborative operational agreement between the ECG and the Philippines headquartered PDS firm (See “Minority Gathers Signatures to Recall Parliament Over PDS Debacle” CitiNewsRoom.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/13/19).

Now, I don’t know why Mr. Fuseini and his National Democratic Congress’ associates are in such a rush to deliberate on the ECG-PDS Affair. I deliberately refuse to categorize it as a “scandal,” because the issues involved are far more complicated than it may seem to both the Inusah Fuseini Gang and those of us members of the general public who may not be in on the quiddities of what is contained therein. Per an advance notification that a reliable source sent yours truly via whatsapp, it appears that the Tamale-Central’s NDC-MP is named in the report as one of the key players who may very well have bungled parts of the ECG-PDS contractual agreement, which could very well have cost the nation millions of dollars. The agreement, as most of our readers may be a bit familiar with, was struck by the Mahama-led erstwhile National Democratic Congress’ regime as far back as 2014.

As yours truly noted in a previous column, shortly after President Akufo-Addo summarily suspended the agreement, the ECG-PDS pact has striking similarities with the other Mahama-struck energy compact that became infamously known as AMERI Deal. In the case of the ECG-PDS deal, which is being funded under the US-underwritten Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), originally established by the George W. Bush, or Bush Junior, Administration and boosted up by former President Barack H. Obama, one equally wonders why the Mahama Posse had not wisely and perhaps more fiscally efficiently chosen an American energy production and distribution company with a proven track-record in the field, instead of a company based in the Philippines with, once again, a dubious middle-man company located in Dubai which, according to details in the leaked report, had not been fully let in on a deal for which the aforesaid Dubai-based firm was supposed to provide some fiscal guarantees and a humongous investment input.

At any rate, what is most significant, if also traumatically disturbing, is a “rumor” that rather than studiously, and religiously, commit funds released by the Ghana-based Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), the funding disbursement arm of the MCA established with the approval of the US government, as a means of ensuring that the $ 498 Million (USD) grant for finding a lasting solution to the country’s perennial “Dumsor” crisis, then President John Dramani Mahama had criminally and scandalously chosen to invest an undisclosed sizeable chunk of this grant money on himself, and his associates as well, by way of the purchase of several plush landed properties in the Middle East.

This is not the very first time that such “rumor” has filtered into the public domain, with Mr. Mahama, characteristically, fiercely and vehemently dismissing the allegation as sheer poppycock or codswallop, in urban British slang. Unbeknownst to the man who is globally infamous for having a very soft spot for bribery, however, according to one leaked version of the ECG-PDS Report, anytime that he drew checks on the MCA funds to satisfy both his widely alleged craving for theft or the purchase of some personal properties somewhere in the Middle East, receipts and bank statements were promptly dispatched to the United States’ Department of State, indicating when and where such withdrawals had been made and for what purposes.

Now, we really don’t know whether these reports or allegations have teeth. What we know, so far, is that ultimately, it is not likely to be members of the Parliamentary Minority who are apt to have the proverbial last laugh. I already have my fingers crossed.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 14, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]