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14.03.2020 Feature Article

GETFund Fraud Is Nothing New – Part 2

GETFund Fraud Is Nothing New – Part 2
14.03.2020 LISTEN

Matters get even worse in the case of Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the current Minister of Education and the ruling New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Manhyia-South Constituency, in the Asante Regional Capital of Kumasi. For those of our readers who may not be aware of this fact, Dr. Opoku-Prempeh, a quite successful entrepreneur in his own right, is the grandson of the legendary Asantehene, Nana Sir Osei Agyeman-Prempeh, II - I believe – and the nephew of former President John “Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor. Dr. Opoku-Prempeh, according to the Editor and Publisher of the New Crusading Guide, Mr. Kweku Baako, was marked down as having been doled $12,000 (USD) in the form of living allowances while the alleged recipient was studying at Harvard University, right here in the United States of America.

But, in fact, Mr. Baako reliably notes that Dr. Opoku-Prempeh had only been offered the piddling living allowance of $1,150 (USD), with the remaining sum of $11,650 (USD) having literally and evidently vanished into the metaphorical thin air. What the foregoing means is that candidate Opoku-Prempeh, contrary to what the GETFund ledger or account books indicate, was only doled just under 10-percent of the scholarship money that ought to have been made available to him. What now remains to be ascertained by the Office of Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo, is the missing puzzle of who received the aforesaid balances of these disbursements only two of which have so far been published. It is also very clear that a cabal of racketeers had set up camp at the GETFund Headquarters who, apparently, bountifully harvested what they had palpably not cultivated or sown.

From the look of things, the preceding details are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. There may be dozens of other names and amounts the overwhelming bulk of which were never delivered, because they had obviously been pocketed by some crooked administrators and other operatives at the GETFund Headquarters. Knowing what we know about how such kleptocratic schemes work in Ghana, it is very likely that the destinations of their clearly stolen money extended to other operatives higher up in Government and some extant party operatives. If this observation has any iota of validity, and we have absolutely no reason to believe that it does not, then the overwhelming bulk of this scandalous mega-scam very likely involved a far greater number of National Democratic Congress’ operatives than operatives of the New Patriotic Party.

We objectively and logically arrive at this conclusion because the temporal, or time, frame during which these veritable acts of immitigable criminality took place, we are reliably informed, was between 2012 and 2018, which means that this Mafia-like racket may very well have begun at the tail end of the death-truncated tenure of President John Evans Atta-Mills, and throughout the entire four-and-half-year tenure of former President John Dramani Mahama, into the first-half of the tenure of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. What the foregoing observations mean is that it is highly likely that approximately 80-to-85-percent of this fraudulent and kleptocratic racket involved movers-and-shakers or key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, who also may very well have established the curious and flagrantly anomalous “new normal” of having cabinet and, most especially, deputy cabinet appointees take undue advantage of such privilege to milk the fiscally famished blue-collar Ghanaian worker by profligately and needlessly tapping into the GETFund largesse as a means of status enhancement by acquiring advanced academic and professional degrees, while also being fully paid for not fully performing the ministerial jobs and duties for which they had been duly and solemnly sworn.

Unwisely packing his cabinet with a majority of part-time ministers and deputy ministers may very well have significantly contributed to the abysmally poor performance of the grossly incompetent and unprecedently profligate Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress. About four years ago, for example, the characteristically petulant and highly opinionated lawyer, Mr. Maurice Ampaw, reliably estimated that at least between 60-to-70-percent of all the Mahama cabinet appointees were graduate students at various stages of their academic programs. The story has also been told of a very powerful senior Mahama cabinet appointee, now an equally powerful legislator, who spent most of the four-and-half-year tenure of the Mahama Presidency shuttling between the London campus of the John Stuart Mill-founded University of London, virtually on a weekly basis, while working for a Master of Economics Degree or an advanced degree in one of the social sciences.

The GETFund racket needs to be promptly and thoroughly investigated by the establishment of a blue-ribbon Commission of Inquiry by President Akufo-Addo with a two-pronged objective, namely, to ascertain the extent of this patently fraudulent act and to ensure that the necessary restitutions, with punitive costs imposed, are promptly effected and, where necessary, rigorously prosecute all the criminal suspects involved, if this seemingly intractable culture of rank official corruption is to be totally extirpated from Ghanaian society. Auditor-General Domelevo may be faced with his most difficult task yet. But, on the whole, the man appears to have the guts and the balls to tackle the same.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 8, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]

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