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01.05.2020 Feature Article

Audit All Abandoned Mahama Projects Before Completion

Audit All Abandoned Mahama Projects Before Completion
01.05.2020 LISTEN

I have absolutely no qualms about the need for the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to complete some of the district and regional hospitals, if not all, began by the erstwhile Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) – (See “Tension at Fomena, Kumawu Over Uncompleted Hospitals” DailyGuideNetwork.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/30/20). But, of course, it also makes a lot of sense to use the exact same yardstick which the former President has publicly stated that he intends to use in auditing all the moneys collected by the managers of the COVID-19 Fund that was recently established by President Akufo-Addo, in the highly unlikely event of Mr. Mahama’s, once again, nonconsecutively succeeding to the Presidency.

Just like the COVID-19 Fund, the moneys appropriated to contractually negotiate each and every one of the uncompleted and/or abandoned hospital projects must be accounted for, in toto, prior to these uncompleted, admittedly vital, projects being cost-effectively signed off on, as it were. Now, what this means is that if any moneys or funds are found to have been illegally paid out, the officials responsible for such illegal payouts must be squarely made to face the proverbial music, by either being forced to settle the cost involved from their personal bank accounts or out of their own wallets and purses or, if necessary, be promptly prosecuted to the fullest extent of what the law allows. Indeed, this is what the newly elected Akufo-Addo Administration ought to have done and demanded at least within the first three months of its assumption of the democratic reins of governance.

Unfortunately, what we clearly and dishearteningly witnessed at the beginning of the current administration was the sort of morbid tentativeness that allowed such prime and criminal mega-kleptocrats as the double-salary drawing Mahama ministerial, cabinet and executive appointees to literally get away with murder. On its own part, the Akufo-Addo Administration could do better to police corruption among the ranks of its own cabinet and executive appointees. It hasn’t also helped very much that rambunctious and narcissistic party insiders like Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, have not constructively and maturely learned how to professionally, appropriately and effectively use the party’s own internal structures to resolve any conflicts and/or differences that they may be having with the same.

Personally, I have quite a bit of problem with the fact that the Mahama regime appears not to have started constructing these uncompleted and abandoned hospital projects until approximately two years into its tenure, that is, 2015. I smell a very big fish here. Which readily tells any critically-thinking Ghanaian citizen that the Mahama regime’s operatives did not appear to have gained entry into Jubilee House with any clearly defined or laid out development plan or agenda for the country, short of quickly getting a visibly ailing and an apparently reluctant President John Evans Atta-Mills out of the way, as was bizarrely and scandalously articulated by then-Vice-President John Dramani Mahama’s first official multicast address to the nation shortly after the breaking news announcement of the death of President Atta-Mills. The Ghanaian taxpayer ought to be as equally interested in having these uncompleted and/or abandoned Mahama health projects, so-called, completed as they ought to be avidly interested in the minute details of how their money was spent in getting these projects started.

The Akufo-Addo government is likely to become its own worst enemy, if it fails to hold the operatives of the previous Mahama regime to strict account on the subject of these so-called Mahama Hospitals. The people have a right to know precisely why each and every one of these so-called Health Projects was abandoned. And then matters could be healthily taken up from here. By the way, we would like the Mahama Posse to be deeply aware of the fact that Ghanaians have not the least bit forgotten the $ 13 Million (USD) Vice-Presidential Mansion Boondoggle. The Mahama Posse may very well be prepared for a midair dogfight with the Akufo-Addo airborne commando forces; but I, for one, absolutely do not foresee the Mahama propaganda pit-bulls being the least bit prepared to be Nuclear-Strafed. The COVID-19 Pandemic is only “The Comedies,” as the kids in my village used to say while we were growing up at Kankang-Jejeti, which is presently renamed Akyem-Sekyere.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 30, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]

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