Lightwave Contract Saga: Okoe Boye challenges Mintah Akandoh over fine details

Former Minister of Health, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, has reacted to the issues raised by his successor, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, on the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) contract signed under the previous NPP administration.

Speaking in an interview on JoyNews on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, Dr Okoe Boye refuted Mintah Akandoh’s assertion that the LHIMS contractors had underperformed.

He stated that the mere fact that agreements in a contract are not achieved does not mean that the party responsible for the specific task has underperformed.

“With all due respect, anybody who has done project management knows that it is not all the time that when a manager of a project tells you, ‘I will do X percentage,’ and you see that he has not done X, you say he has underperformed,” he argued.

He asserted that the government must take into account the reasons the company has given for not meeting the agreement before making any judgments.

Infractions in LHIMS contract now with Attorney General - Health Minister

“You have to look at the reasons they have given you for where they are. Lightwave cited disruption in the supply chain after COVID… In 2019, we ran into COVID-19. If you ask anybody who is into IT, sometimes if you even order computers, they tell you, you have to be in a queue. All these reasons are there.

“If there is good faith, what you look at are some key things: 1. Were they capable of onboarding the main ones? Yes. The few ones that are left — with what they have done — can they do it? Yes,” he added.

The former health minister also noted that it would be an injustice for the government to say that Lightwave has not done its work because it has not even been fully paid.

“When we sat down with them and realised that they had a surplus of about 9 to 10 million, what we asked was that they expedite the work such that the ones you roll on board would match this 10.

“And remember, the contract sum is $100 million; the state has not paid all. There is a deficit of $23 million, so anyone who asks, ‘Why have you not done the work?’ is not being fair to them,” he said.

LHIMS system disruption caused by vendor 'sabotage' - Health minister

The current Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, disclosed that irregularities identified in the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) contract, signed under the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, have been referred to the Attorney General for advice and further action.

Speaking at the Government Accountability Series on Wednesday, October 29, Akandoh said investigations by his ministry uncovered significant breaches in the execution of the LHIMS agreement.

According to him, the contractor delivered less than half of the planned health facility connections but still received more than $77 million, representing over 70 percent of the total contract sum.

He further noted that the Lightwave contract was never submitted to Parliament for approval.

“It was never a contract considered by Parliament. The vendor’s conduct made renegotiation efforts impossible. They acted in bad faith,” he stated.

He also stated that the government had requested Lightwave to hand over control of the system and its infrastructure to the state, as stipulated in the contract.

However, challenges arose because the system was hosted on a cloud server in India, restricting Ghana’s control over the platform.

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