The GYEEDA Report: Mahama’s major anti-corruption test

The report on the activities of the Ghana Youth Empowerment and Entrepreneurial Development Authority (GYEEDA) was presented to President John Dramani Mahama last week, but even before the bowels of the report are opened, good governance watchers and anti-corruption campaigners have already tagged it as a test case for the president to show he can fight against graft.

What has made the report more of a test case for President Mahama is the reported indictment of some big guns in his National Democratic Congress (NPP) party. Messrs Abuga Pele and Clement Kofi Humado both cited in the report are sitting Members of Parliament (MPs).

While Clement Kofi Humado is the immediate past Minister of Youth and Sports, Abuga Pele is the immediate past National Coordinator of GYEEDA. The two are alleged to have signed numerous lopsided agreements in which service providers took more than one-third of contract sums while only a third went to beneficiaries.

In the case of training programmes, most of the programmes did not take place yet huge sums of monies were doled out to so-called training groups and consultants,some of who are reported to have vanished into thin air.

The GYEEDA report, which is creating rampus in Government circles, is in fact, the fourth investigation instituted by the government on GYEEDA, and in all cases, the findings are similar; and so the president’s action on it must be a clear departure from the previous inactions.

Although the president is yet to make the report public, snippets of the report which are already circulating in the media paints to a clear picture of wanton dissipation of state resources by officialdom.

Reports say in certain cases, loans that were contracted by Government with parliamentary approval were handed over to these service providers as grants, and even then, the jobs for which the monies were given to them were not executed.

According to the report, both Messers Humado and Abuga Pele “have significant questions to answer on the operations of GYEEDA, particularly during the time of their mandate.”

The report says Mr. Humado and the Chief Director need to explain the “lack of any transparency in the choice of service providers, the award of contracts and the visible breaches of the 1992 Constitution, the Public Procurement Act, the Internal Revenue Act and the Financial Administration Act.”

They must also explain why they approved “significant sums in interest free loans without parliamentary approval.”

The committee also questions what it calls “hasty signing of numerous contracts” between 12th December 2012 and 31st December 2012 by Abuga Pele at a time he was exiting the organization.

Abuga Pele, according to media reports, must explain why he witnessed “numerous contracts between 12th December 2012 and 31st December 2012 as the National Coordinator when he had at the time resigned.”

The Committee also wants Mr Pele to explain why he approved “payments of over $2.3m to Goodwill Consulting Limited for no work done”, as well as “the lapse in leadership and effective management of modules during his tenure".