We Demand The Removal Of Alhaji Gilbert Iddi

A Press Statement By Members Of The Coalition Of Youth Associations In Northern Ghana

We Demand The Removal Of Alhaji Gilbert Iddi As Chief Executive Officer Of Sada And The Reconstitution Of The Sada Board

Members of the Upper East Youth association (UEYA), members of the Concerned Citizens’ Association of Tamale (CCAT), members of the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), members of various youth and women groups from the Upper West Region, members of the Development Research and Advocacy Centre (DRAC), our friends from the inky fraternity, ladies and gentlemen.

We are gathered here today to announce to the hearing of all and sundry that the youth and concerned citizens of the three northern regions; Upper East, Upper West and Northern, are fed up with the blatant abuse and dissipation of the scarce resources of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) by its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Alhaji Gilbert Iddi and the failure of the Board of SADA to exercise due authority to swiftly deal with the situation and arrest SADA from imminent collapse.

We are severely hurt that with the current happenings in SADA, the stage is set for SADA to join the long list of failed development programmes such as URADEP, NORRIP etc that has been witnessed in the past, if nothing urgently is done to salvage the situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no doubt that SADA is a well crafted and well thought- through development initiative that has the huge potential to resolve the long standing development question of the north and for that matter the entire savanna ecological zone. There is no doubt that SADA has the potential to set Ghana on the path to long lasting and sustainable development, peace and tranquility.

It is also clear that SADA is one of the few development programmes in this country that has received the unflinching support and commitment of all political parties and the political unionism on SADA speaks volumes of how important SADA is to this country. With the seed capital of GHC 25 million, the Kuffour led administration established the Northern Ghana Development Fund in the 2008. This was later expanded and refocused under the Mills-Mahama led administration into its current strategic form, benefiting not only the three northern regions, but also a number of contiguous districts in both Brong Ahafo and Volta regions. Both the CPP and PNC and other political parties have also endorsed the exigency of SADA as the critical tool for the transformation of the northern economy and for that matter, Ghana.

Additionally, there is high level of commitment by the international community and donors to contributing their quota by way of finances and technical support for the effective and efficient implementation of SADA.

All these are clear signals that SADA as a regional development programme has a lot of buy-in and good will of all key stakeholders and is about the best opportunity we have as a people to steer ourselves out of underdevelopment and poverty.

We therefore cannot sit aloof and allow the greed and incompetence of the CEO, Alhaji Gilbert Iddi to destroy this novel programme and drive us all into failure and continued poverty.

We therefore wish to state unequivocally, that nobody, and I repeat, nobody here is in any way out to chastise SADA and its activities as alleged by the CEO in a story he planted on Ghanaweb.com on Sunday July 14, 2013 captioned “SADA steps up more projects to improve lives in Northern Ghana.”

We are here to demand his immediate removal as CEO of SADA. He has become so cancerous and inimical to the growth and progress of SADA that we will stop at nothing to purge and cleanse SADA of Alhaji Gilbert Iddi and work to ensure that his likes will not have a place in SADA.

The Basis of our Demand

1. Profligate spending and wanton dissipation of SADA resources

a) GHC 170,000.00 internet connectivity

Ladies and gentlemen, from our sources and documents in our hands, the CEO spent a whopping GHC 170,000.00 between January and March 2013 on internet connectivity when indeed, SADA staff as at March 2013 had no computers to work with. We all know the SADA offices housed in the old cotton company building in Tamale and it is unfathomable how such amount of money could be spent on internet connectivity in a matter of three months in such a small organization.

b) Three million Ghana Cedis (GHC 3000,000.00) for boreholes

We have evidence that SADA has contracted a company called Heiser Engineering to drill 100 boreholes in the SADA zone at a cost of Three Million Ghana Cedis (GHC 3m) with each borehole costing GHC30, 000.00. Not only is the per unit cost so outrageous judging that by the going market price, a mechanized borehole cost at maximum, GHC 15,000.00, but more importantly, there are no traces of where those boreholes are located. Nobody can point at any such borehole in any part of the three regions. It is clear, that the CEO has questions to answer.

c) GHC 600,000.00 for SADA publications

Another example of a profligate expenditure is an amount of GHC 600,000.00 spent on publication of SADA documents. Whilst it is true that some brief publications on SADA are in circulation, it is again unthinkable that such a huge sum of money could be said to have been used for just publications. In any case, any expenditure to the tune of GHC 600,000.00 per the public procurement act, Act 663 has to undergo competitive tendering. The question we ask is, did the contract for the publications go through the required legal processes? Which companies submitted bids and how was the winner selected?

d) A Mahindra tractor at GHC 79,000.00?

From information available to us, under the leadership of Alhaji Iddi, SADA procured 100 Mahindra tractors last year at a cost of GHC 79,000.00 per one and has again bought 175 more Mahindra tractors to be supplied to farmers/service providers. We all know that in terms of durability and rigorousness, Mahindra tractors are nothing compared to Massey Ferguson tractors and many of the farmers in northern Ghana know this. It is therefore surprising that SADA will choose to spend GHC79, 000.00 to buy one Mahindra tractor when same amount could buy two Massey Ferguson tractors that have more vigor, quality and durability. Once again, Alhaji Gilbert Iddi has demonstrated his readiness to slaughter SADA on the altar of greed, mismanagement and incompetence and feed fat on it to the detriment of the poor and vulnerable people of northern Ghana.

2. Conflict of interest

a) Plus One Investment and SADA butternut squash

We are aware that Alhaji Iddi is owner/ partner of Plus One Investment, a company which has received a lot of resources from SADA to engage in the production of butternut squash for export. The company’s dealings with SADA started when he became CEO of SADA. While we have no qualms with SADA, in the spirit of Public Private Partnership (PPP), providing seed capital to private enterprise that will produce jobs for the teaming youth and support the growth and development of the northern economy, we are concerned that the CEO with a private interest in a private firm that receives funding from SADA is a clear case of conflict of interest. We are yet also to be told whether the funds SADA doles out to the company are in respect of loans or grants?

3. Blatant disregard to basic rules of doing business and waste of public resources

a) Lack of due diligence

Dear friends, you would have noticed that for the better part of this year, SADA, which is very dear to our hearts, has been in the news for the wrong reasons. Whether it is Asongtaaba/SADA Guinea fowl project or Asongtaaba Afforestation project, the news around these two projects that hold the potential of changing the lives of millions of farmers, youth and women groups in the Northern Savanna Ecological Zone, have been about allegations of corruption, mismanagement and the lack of value for money in the execution of these projects.

The main reason for the bad press around these rather laudable initiatives is that the leadership of SADA, represented all in all by Alhaji Gilbert Iddi, failed unpardonably to apply basic business and public accountability principles in the conduct of SADA businesses.

For instance, it is documented that Alhaji Iddi agreed and doled out the GHC 15 million to partner Asongtaaba Cottage Industries (ACI) to implement the guinea fowl project without any feasibility study or value for money analysis. Indeed, we understand ACI did not even present a business plan to SADA yet he went ahead to dole out such amount of money to ACI without any clearly stated rules of engagement that will ensure that the public interest and purse are protected.

If Alhaji Iddi had exercised good leadership, not only would the guinea fowl project be making significant contributions to the growth of the northern local economy but that many more youths who are migrating to urban centres in search of nonexistent jobs would have been gainfully employed and living fulfilled lives.

On the Asongtaaba Afforestation Project, it is unthinkable that Alhaji Iddi, an agriculturalist and an indigene of the north who is fully aware of the rainfall pattern in the north and for that matter the vagaries of the weather, would allow tree planting to take place in the north in the months of October and November when the dry season is about setting in. Besides the factor of odd timing and judgment that has become of the failed Afforestation programme, Alhaji Iddi has continued to insult the intelligence of Ghanaians by erecting sign posts and attaching them to already grown groves and presenting such as evidence of the success of the Afforestation programme.

4. Donor Confidence dwindling

Ladies and gentle men, reliable information reaching us indicates that donors who have been behind the successful take-off of SADA are on the verge of exiting because of their dissatisfaction with the malfeasant conduct of the CEO. Ladies and gentlemen, we all were witnesses to the teething challenges that confronted and almost stalled the successful takeoff of SADA. For instance, the government could not provide the needed seed capital in full to smoothly kick start SADA because according to government the nation’s economy was seriously challenged. Therefore the support pledge by donor partners is so timely and must be harnessed to catalyst the successful implementation of SADA programmes.

We are aware that the Department For International Development (DFID) of the UK, has withheld a Fifteen Million Pound support to SADA for institutional capacity building because of their serious reservations on how poorly the resources of SADA is being managed .

We cannot allow this to continue.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the inky fraternity, we therefore make the following pleas to His Excellency, John Dramani Mahama not only as critical steps in salvaging SADA from total collapse and failure, but also as a measure of his unalloyed commitment to fighting corruption, mediocrity and mismanagement.

1. We demand that Alhaji Gilbert Iddi be immediately removed as CEO of SADA without further delays and an independent investigation team set up to investigates the alleged acts of corruption and mismanagement.

2. We demand that all the senior staff of SADA be made to declare their assets.

3. We demand that an independent forensic audit be conducted on all SADA activities.

4. We demand that the board be dissolved for failing to exercise oversight responsibilities over management.

5. We wish to encourage all well meaning Ghanaians to continue to scrutinize SADA constructively to make it work and improve the living standards of Ghanaians and the prosperity of Ghana

Thank you for your kind attention