On Bawumia's Meet the Press: Is the vice president's incorruptible descriptive tag intact?

Over the weekend, I managed to tune in to the NPP’s 2024 flagbearer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s meet the press session, with the sole aim of finding out whether any of the journalists present, would accuse him of indulging in any bribery and corruption scandal in his time in office.

Nevertheless, at the end of the session, Bawumia’s incorruptible descriptive tag was intact, as no journalist could accuse him of involvement in any bribery and corruption scandal.

It is important to emphasize that being the President of a nation is a serious job and as such it requires a serious and committed person.

Therefore, it is quite worrying if corruption cases are hanging on the neck of an individual who is going to look after the national coffers and has so far been unwilling to seriously disprove such allegations.

I have always held a firm and unadulterated conviction that the numerous corruption allegations hanging on the neck of former President Mahama largely led to NDC’s 2016 humiliating election defeat.

If you may recall, immediately after the NDC’s 2016 humiliating election defeat, the party leadership set up a 13-member committee, presided over by former Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Professor Kwesi Botchwey, with the sole mandate of traveling to the length and breadth of the country to interact with the grassroots supporters and investigate the causes of the historic defeat and put forward recommendations.

The credible sources, however, had it that the Botchwey Committee’s report indicted former President Mahama, the NDC’s 2016 flagbearer as the main cause of NDC’s humiliating defeat.

On the issue of corruption, the Botchwey Committee’s report is quoted to have emphasised that former President Mahama was perceived to have endorsed corruption in his administration.

My dear reader, isn’t it therefore strange when Mahama keeps stressing that, unlike the current president, he will clamp down on bribery and corruption and won’t behave as a ‘clearing agent’?

If we take a stroll down memory lane, sometime in October 2010, the British media brought up reports about how then Vice President John Dramani Mahama was lobbied by a British Cabinet Minister to get a reprieve for the ban imposed on Armajaro Holdings, one of the cocoa buying companies who were found guilty for smuggling the commodity out of Ghana.

It would be recalled that Armajaro Company was banned together with a few other

companies, when the award-winning investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas exposed the smuggling of bags of cocoa into neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire.

Shockingly, however, the British media reported that subsequent to the meeting between the then Vice President John Dramani Mahama and the British Cabinet Minister, Armajaro Company was given a reprieve and then started its operations.

In another development, sometime in 2009, the Mills/Mahama administration promised that a certain STX Housing deal was going to provide about 200,000 affordable housing units to the country’s security agencies at an estimated cost of $10 billion.

However, due to irrevocable negligence on the part of the Mills/Mahama administration and the boardroom tussle between the project supervisors– STX Korea and GKA Airports Company Limited (STX Ghana), the deal unfortunately hit a dead-end.

The late President Mills had this to say during a press conference: “we have some difficulties with the STX project and as a president, I am eating a humble pie to say that we are looking for alternatives.”

It was later reported that Ghana had allegedly lost a staggering $300 million in spite of the fact that the deal did not materialise.

Interestingly, however, sources had it that at all material times, it was the then vice president, John Dramani Mahama’s office that handled issues concerning the STX Housing deal.

Strangely though, President Mills of blessed memory seemed apocalyptic about the whole deal, judging from his State of the Nation address in 2010, when he had this to say: “the Vice President had travelled to Seoul, Korea, to nail the coffin' of STX.”

We can recollect, albeit with extreme sadness, that although the STX Housing loan agreement which was supposed to provide affordable housing units to the security agencies did not materialise, yet the then vice president, John Dramani Mahama, is alleged to have given us a bill in excess of $300 million. How strange!

In a related development, after the failed deal with STX to build 200,000 housing units for the nation's security agencies, the NDC administration entered into another deal with the GUMA Group for the construction of 500 housing units.

The deal which was alleged to have been negotiated by the then vice president, John Dramani Mahama, was widely criticised by various stakeholders, just like the STX deal, following the decision to side-line local construction firms in favour of the foreign company. The unusually high cost of the project was also a source of concern to many.

Some observers thus believe that it was due to the countless dubious agreements which made Ghana’s debt balloon from an arguable meagre GH9.5 billion in 2009 to an incredible GH122.4 billion by December 2016 with little to show for it.

As if those allegations were not enough, former Joy FM’s Manasseh Azuri exposed President Mahama’s furtive gift of a brand new Ford Expedition vehicle, worth over $100,000 by the Burkinabe Contractor called Djibril Kanazoe.

According to Manasseh Azuri’s report, the Burkinabe Contractor Kanazoe had undertaken a number of contracts that were secured through sole sourcing and handpicking, amid allegations of President Mahama’s influence.

Manasseh reported that Djibril Kanazoe had over the years been bidding for contracts in the country. However, he was not successful until a middleman led him to meet then-Vice President Mahama.

Subsequent to meeting the then Vice President Mahama, Kanazoe was handpicked to build the $650,000 Ghana Embassy fence wall in Burkina Faso.

According to Manasseh Azuri, in September 2014, when officials of the Bank of Ghana met the Public Accounts Committee of Ghana Parliament (PAC), it came to light that an amount of $656, 246.48 had been spent on the construction of a fence wall over a parcel of land belonging to the Ghana Embassy in Burkina Faso.

Unsurprisingly, PAC requested the Bank of Ghana to look into what it referred to as: “the outrageous” cost of the project.

However, it came to light that the procurement process was violated to the advantage of President Mahama’s Burkinabe friend.

Amazingly, during an interview with Manasseh, Djibril Kanazoe admitted that he did not put in a bid for the contract. However, the Ghana Embassy in Ouagadougou wrote to his company to request price quotations for the project. He however forwarded the necessary quotes and was selected.

“Subsequently, the Burkinabe contractor delivered to President Mahama, the ‘gift’ of a brand new Ford Expedition vehicle in 2012, the same year his company was selected, again through sole-sourcing, to execute more projects” (See: ‘Burkinabe Contractor offers a controversial gift to President Mahama’; myjoyonline.com, 15/06/2015).

If you may remember, in his State of the Nation Address on 19th February 2009, the late President Mills informed the Parliament that his government was looking into the decision to acquire two executive Presidential jets.

The late President Mills, however, expressed his incertitude over the acquisition of the aircraft and thus maintained: "Ghana simply cannot afford the expenditure at this time and we certainly do not need two Presidential Jets" (thestatesmanonline.com, 16/06/2016).

Strangely, however, whilst the late Mills was busily delivering his crucial State of the Nation address in the parliament, Vice President John Mahama, who also happened to be the chairman of the Armed Forces Council, was blissfully entertaining delegations from Brazil and busily negotiating the acquisition of five jets, including the most expensive hangar without the knowledge of the late President Mills.

Unsurprisingly, however, the late President Mills became suspicious of the whole deal and decided to put a committee together to review the deal, according to Mr Martin Amidu, the former Attorney General in the late President Mills's administration.

By inference, the late Mills was extremely unhappy about the deal, hence setting up a committee to investigate his then-vice president Mahama.

During the NDC’s 2020 flagbearership contest, the other potential presidential aspirants and their supporters emitted vehemently and inexorably that former President Mahama was the main reason why NDC lost the 2016 election.

The aggrieved supporters uncompromisingly ventilated their illimitable indignations over the comeback of former President Mahama.

So it came as no surprise to some of us at all when a group of organizers within the opposition NDC urged the then National Executives of the party to allow Mr. Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin to go unopposed in the party’s 2020 flagbearership contest (See: Alban Bagbin must go unopposed – NDC organisers; ghananewsagency.org/ghanaweb.com, 12/03/2018).

“So many people in the party feel Hon. Bagbin is the best person to lead us into 2020 and the reasons are pretty clear: he is the exact contrast to former President John Mahama in the matter of marketability and yet retains the Northern extraction that will satisfy the need to have a Northerner complete an eight-year mandate.”

Back then, the spokesperson for the group insisted vehemently that since corruption was going to be a key campaign theme in 2020, and the fact that former President Mahama's administration had issues with corruption, Ghanaian voters would be forced to reject him if he was to be elected as the next flagbearer.

In fact, it was not only the aggrieved NDC organizers who expressed concerns about the corruption in the erstwhile Mahama administration.

The NDC founder and the former president of Ghana, the late J. J. Rawlings, audaciously came out and disclosed that the corruption in the Mahama administration was so pervasive to the extent that a former NDC minister licentiously bought two luxurious mansions worth a staggering $3 million from an estate agent in Accra shortly after the Mahama’s government exited power (see: ‘NDC minister grabs two mansions’; dailyguidenetwork.com,

12/06/2018).

Besides, prior to the NDC’s 2020 flagbearership contest, the Honourable Bagbin, the then MP for Nadoli Kaleo and a contestant in the NDC’s presidential race attributed the humiliating defeat of Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2016 general elections to bad governance (See: ‘Mahama's boys bought V8, built mansions in 4 years – Bagbin; myjoyonline.com/ghanaweb.com, 19/08/2018).

Mr Bagbin was reported to have quizzed somewhat dejectedly: “Don’t tell me that the boys that suddenly came closer to the president within four years can build mansions and buy land cruisers and you say there are no resources, where are they getting the money, their salaries?”

Then again, investigations by the Office of the Special Prosecutor in 2020 and 2024 confirmed that Mahama was the Government Official One who was cited in the Airbus bribery and corruption investigation carried out by the United States and the United Kingdom officials.

The truth is, not every single Ghanaian was oblivious to the happenings in the country prior to the 2016 general elections.