Bawumia's manifesto team member grabs juicy single-sourced GH¢245m contract – Ablakwa

MP for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has disclosed that a member of the Vice President’s manifesto team has become a beneficiary of a single-sourced GH¢245 million controversial contract.

According to the lawmaker, he has intercepted documents confirming a controversial approval by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) dated 5th October, 2023, to an entity known as Spectrum Fibre Limited.

The procurement approval letter in issue is signed by PPA Chief Executive, Mr. Frank Mante and addressed to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye.

The intercepted PPA letter grants the Ghana Health Service approval to single-source Spectrum Fibre Company Limited to “build a Wide Network (WAN) Connectivity Services and Data Solution Centre for GH¢’ 745 sites in all regions on an Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) basis for a 10-year period valued at a colossal US$18,480,125.00.”

At the current exchange rate, that is GH¢245 million.

In a Facebook post, Mr Ablakwa said top officials within Ghana’s health sector who have spoken to him on condition of anonymity are outraged at this Spectrum Fibre US$18.48 million (GH¢245 million) deal, mainly because they are convinced it is a needless and cruel duplication.

These top deep-throat sources, according to the MP, say what Spectrum Fibre has been handpicked to do are already contained in the massive US$100 million (GH¢1.3 billion) contract also “awarded under an opaque single-source procurement method in 2017 to Lightwave eHealthcare Solutions Limited.”

Mr Ablakwa noted that since the rollout of the Lightwave single-sourced contract, Ghanaian taxpayers have paid Lightwave a colossal sum of GH₵595,873,749.23.

Below are details of the full statement:

THE GH₵2.6BILLION DUBIOUS, DUPLICATIVE & DEADLY DIGITALIZATION DEALS IN GHANA’S HEALTH SECTOR — PART 2

BAWUMIA’S MANIFESTO TEAM MEMBER GRABS JUICY SINGLE-SOURCED GHS245MILLION CONTROVERSIAL CONTRACT

As demonstrated in Part 1 — digitalization has become the new conduit for mega looting of billions of taxpayer and donor funds through dubious, duplicative and deadly single-sourced procurements even as conditions in the health sector continue to deteriorate alarmingly.

Seeing how lucrative the digitalization booty has been so far, a few more crony companies have been invited to the looting party apparently to come “bamba with the big boys” (all royalties paid to Goya Menor & Nektunez).

SOA Oversight has intercepted latest documents confirming a controversial approval by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) dated 5th October, 2023 to an entity known as Spectrum Fibre Limited. (A copy is duly attached).

The procurement approval letter in issue is signed by PPA Chief Executive, Mr. Frank Mante and addressed to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye.

The intercepted PPA letter grants the Ghana Health Service approval to single source Spectrum Fibre Company Limited to “build a Wide Network (WAN) Connectivity Services and Data Solution Centre for GHS’ 745 sites in all regions on an Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) basis for a 10-year period valued at a colossal US$18,480,125.00.”

At the current exchange rate, that is a staggering GH₵245million.

Top officials within Ghana’s health sector who have spoken to me on condition of anonymity are outraged at this Spectrum Fibre US$18.48million (GH₵245million) sweetheart deal mainly because they are convinced it is a needless and cruel duplication.

These top deep-throat sources say what Spectrum Fibre has been handpicked to do are already contained in the massive US$100million (GH₵1.3billion) contract also awarded under an opaque single-source procurement method in 2017 to Lightwave eHealthcare Solutions Limited. These assertions are correct as confirmed by documents on the Lightwave project which I published in yesterday’s Part 1.

It is instructive to note that since the roll out of the Lightwave single-sourced contract, Ghanaian taxpayers have paid Lightwave a colossal sum of GH₵595,873,749.23.

In Part 1, I provided details of Lightwave’s 2023 payment which amounted to GHS246,893,710.

In Part2, I hereby submit incontrovertible details of all payments to Lightwave from the inception of the contract to 2022 amounting to another GH₵348,980,039.23 as seen below:

29-Jun-19

MOH/HQ/CE/050/19/RW

GH₵10,457,000.00

25-Oct-19

MOH/HQ/CE/134/19/RW

GH₵5,312,200.00

20-Dec-19

NHIA/FA/GS/DEC19/0150/DOK

GH₵5,000,000.00

15-May-20

MOH/HQ/CE/027/20/RW

GH₵13,000,000.00

13-Nov-20

MOH/HQ/CE/139/20/RW

GH₵25,394,612.80

20-Dec-20

NHIA/FA/GS/DEC19/0151/DOK

GH₵31,518,684.77

31-May-21

MOH/HQ/CE/082/21/RW

GH₵30,898,147.35

13-Jul-21

MOH/HQ/CE/201/21/RW

GH₵31,391,500.00

7-Dec-21

MOH/HQ/CE/399/21/RW

GH₵30,780,750.00

1-Jan-22

NHIA/FA/MOH/NOV21/2583/DOK

GH₵41,123,400.00

26-May-22

NHIA/FA/MOH/SEP22/2584/DOK

GH₵39,617,651.58

1-Sep-22

MOH/HQ/CE/076/22/RW

GH₵7,000,000.00

1-Dec-22

MOH/HQ/GS/084/22/RW

GH₵18,000,000.00

20-Dec-22

RE:NHIA/FA/GS/DEC19/0151/DOK

GH₵31,518,684.77

20-Dec-22

RE:NHIA/FA/GS/DEC19/0150/DOK GH₵5,000,000.00

31-Dec-22

NHIA/FA/MOH/DEC22/2586/NET

GH₵22,967,407.96

TOTAL OF 2019 TO 2022 PAYMENTS — 348,980,039.23

With over GH₵595million already paid to Lightwave under this supposedly bankrupt economy, every patriotic Ghanaian would be on the side of these top officials within the health sector who are livid and have legitimately had enough of the needless duplication and reckless dissipation of resources for private gain in the name of digitalization.

Investigations by SOA Oversight into the latest kid on the block — Spectrum Fibre Limited have led to very interesting findings.

Spectrum Fibre Limited was incorporated on October 25, 2017. (See incorporation details attached)

The Directors of Spectrum Fibre are Razak Awudulai and Fati Baba.

Spectrum Fibre has no track record in carrying out what they have been engaged to do even though they were single-sourced.

Further checks reveal that the owner of Spectrum Fibre, Mr. Razak Awudulai is currently serving on Vice President Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia’s 2024 Manifesto Communications Committee. Insiders say he also carries out “special duties” for the Bawumia 2024 campaign.

Mr. Razak Awudulai was also an appointee of President Akufo-Addo when he served as Managing Director of Go Energy, a subsidiary of GOIL in President Akufo-Addo’s first term. (See appointment letter attached).

Further digging also reveal that Mr. Razak Awudulai is an MD of another digitalization company known as Broad Spectrum Limited which has been handed over millions of Ghana Cedis under questionable circumstances by the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund.

It has clearly emerged that there are many more exciting personal reasons for the Vice President’s determination in championing digitalization schemes.

There are however, many more concerns about the Spectrum Fibre GHS245million deal:

The blatant abuse of the single-source procurement method, particularly when both President Akufo-Addo and Vice President Bawumia promised to achieve what they termed “ending the era of single sourcing.”

The Spectrum Fibre deal did not receive the approval of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) in contravention of Act 771 and in blatant disregard of the Minister of Communications and Digitalization’s circular of 16th June, 2017.

It is also to be noted that under the World Bank US$50million eTransform connectivity project, as many as 100 health facilities have already been captured which further exacerbates the wasteful and needless fears raised by stakeholders about the Spectrum Fibre deal.

There are fundamental concerns about how most of these GH₵2.6billion dubious digitalization contracts in the health sector are violently breaching Ghana’s Data Protection Act.

Insiders inform me that shockingly Ghana is not in control of our medical records being harvested by most of these crony companies. The Ghana Health Service does not even have access to the source codes. Our medical records are in the hands of people in India and elsewhere.

The crony companies handling our medical records have failed to register with the Data Protection Commission.

This is very frightening considering that under Section 35(3) of the Cybersecurity Act, 2020 (Act 1038) all these health institutions have been designated as Critical Information Infrastructure. (See designations and gazette notification attached).

All these have very grave data protection and national security implications and that is why moving forward, I have decided to embark on the following actions:

1. Proceed to court immediately to stop these blatant data protection violations;

2. Petition the OSP on the corruption related aspects of this latest exposé;

3. Petition donor partners to carry out a forensic audit into all health digitalization projects being funded by them;

4. File a motion in Parliament demanding a much broader bi-partisan enquiry into all digitalization projects.

May God help us on this mission.

For God and Country.

Ghana First