The Chronicle of John Mahama’s Corruption

- Part 1

President John Mahama and his NDC administration have been badly saddled with corruption and has as a result put Ghana squarely within the sights of Transparency International and other international monitoring organisation. Ghana is now ranked third in the world of corruption globally. This is the latest corruption perception index report issued by Gallup indicates that Ghana is seriously galloping in corruption from one institutions to another and from one person to another especially government officials.

This is a sad situation for us all as a nation, a south Sahara African country (Ghana) to first gain independence. The sadder part of the situation is that the government is not even taken this global negative perspective on Ghana into any serious thinking plan. It is rather fire fighting everyone who mentions this negative report. This knee jerk reaction to the fight against corruption is making it more and more believable that corruption is more not merely a perception but a reality.

There numerous reports that the President himself has been involved in a number of issues which can best be described as shady to an extent that a former Attorney a General under his previous administration in which he was the Vice President and later Acting President, has come out to confirm that a committee was set up at a cabinet level by the late President Mills to investigate his Vice, John Mahama.

The need to investigate him came over the poor accounting he rendered to the cabinet over the purchase of the Embraer air crafts from Brazil in 2010-2011 financial year. An unexplained $55million bill slapped on the nation suggested that the then Vice President Mahama had pocketed that amount. This was a serious damming issue.

Again it further came out that $20million for in-plane entertainment shot the final bill to $75million per plane, five in total. The President Mills, according to Mr Martin Amidu, the then Attorney General, put up three member committee to find out the circumstances leading to this bill. Three months after the committee was put into action, the President died mysteriously, and the report was never published.

In the run up to 2012 elections, there were more agitations about some 250 Ghanaian students sent to Cuba to be trained as Medical Doctors. Again some unexplained $50,000 per student was attributed to Mr Mahama who led the government team on the Cuba deal and there has not been any explanation as to how and why a free scholarship should cost a Ghana government that much.

The President's brother's indebtedness to SSNIT which was written off in unexplained circumstance and the resultant sale of SSNIT assets to defray the cost has also been another charge levelled against the President which he has not been able give any tangible explanation. In his own administration, the President has presided over unbridled corruption, from dubious judgement debts to giving of contracts to cronies. The Mahama administration has not been far away from a number of corruption allegations and is doing nothing about righting the wrongs, even to an extent that a sitting Supreme Court Judge described the administration as "create, loot and Share" syndicate.

While Ghc45 million meant for afforestation and guinea fowl projects under the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) programme, remain unaccounted for, over Ghc203 million is also alleged to have gone into private pockets under the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA).

Also, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is alleged to have paid an IT firm, Subah InfoSolutions, about Ghc144 million for telecommunication monitoring services though the contract was not executed. Commissioner-General of the GRA has not denied the allegation but pleaded to a lesser amount of Ghc75 million was paid to Subah for undertaking the verification aspect of the contract.

In another rot involving the GRA under Mahama watch, it has been discovered that some 280 state and private companies evaded taxes to the tune of over Ghc730 million with the connivance of Customs officials.

All these, notwithstanding the circumstances and the corruption which took place during the STX deal, the government officials confirmed including the President to have taken bribes, the over $250m reported varnished during the process for the STX deal for housing project in Ghana has not up to now been accounted for.nGhana our mother land is in serious trouble, Ghana our mother land is seriously bleeding internally.

Stay tuned… for Part 2

Kwesi Atta-Krufi Hayford