Lesson For Workers From Data Bank’s Obotan Scandal

The nationwide boycott by public sector workers over the government’s authority to choose fund managers for their Tier Two pension scheme indicates that they (the workers) do not understand the nitty-gritties of the issue at stake and how dangerous it is to leave their pension money in the hands of private enterprise.

Workers who are ignorant about the dangers simply ought to use history as a guide, using the Obotan scam as a guide. Indeed, the most compelling reason why the government cannot and must not leave public sector workers’ monies in the hands of private enterprise is the Obotan Scandal in which $2.24million of workers pension at SSNIT was squandered by Databank and Enterprise Insurance Company (EIC) on a non-existence project.

The Obotan project was a phony project initiated by the Enterprise Insurance Company (EIC) and Data Bank to con the Government of Ghana to part away workers’ pension. It is instructive to note that EIC is owned by Data Bank whose CEO is Ken Ofori-Atta, cousin and chief financier of NPP flag-bearer, Nana Akufo Addo.

Databank and EIC got SSNIT to part away with $2.44millin of workers’ pension contribution ostensibly to build a real estate project off the upmarket Independence and Osu Avenue in Accra. The project was never executed. Investigations were to show later that Obotan Developers Limited did not even exist.

That was how $2.44million of the Ghanaian workers’ pension was squandered by private enterprise. For the Government of Ghana (GoG) to be told today therefore that it must leave workers’ pension in the hands of private enterprise is simply untenable. Even worse is the fact that one of the fund managers of the workers’ pension is the same Data Bank, chief architects of the Obotan scam and scandal in 1998.

Till date, Databank has not been able to account for the $2.44million for the Housing Project. It has also not been able to show that the company even exists.