The Festering Metro Mass Debacle

On Sunday November 23, 2014 at 6a.m., the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) carried a headline story of President John Mahama’s dissolution of the entire Board of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), following the Board’s apparent confused, conflicted, clueless and inept handling of a drug arrest in the UK involving a lady said to be Ghanaian. The Board’s account of its involvement with that arrest stands in stark contrast with the British Government’s position on how the arrest came about. Whether or not NACOB was involved, this matter goes to the heart of Ghana, and as a Ghanaian, I am partial to my country; I love my country; if a disease afflicts my country, I want to cure it no matter where it originates. If I find that an institution in my country charged with that specific responsibility is neglecting its duties, I will take an axe to the matter. I believe the British will do the same in their own country. That is what President John Mahama did on this unfolding narcotics story, and that is what he should be doing on the Metro Mass Transit Limited hemorrhage currently unfolding.

Leaders are often reluctant to be seen doing things that others have suggested because they believe it portrays them as weak, indecisive and lacking in original ideas. That may be true, but non-action also has its risks, the biggest being missed opportunities. Sometimes, the best ideas for resolving problems do not come from dark-suited, silk tie-wearing, Ph.D-wielding elitists. In keeping with our continuing investigations of the Metro Mass debacle, some more damning revelations have emerged and if true, then President Mahama ought to take a closer look at Metro Mass, even as unclear as the facts may currently be, just like he did with the Narcotics Control Board; it is the least he can do.

“Twea!!! This procurement deal is a merely formality. This contract is already mine, no matter what anyone else does. Look, my brother, it is not about how you write your procurement proposal or your “book-long”; it is about who you know, what you have in your proposal and who you give it to” - the owner of Messrs Allied Home Stores Limited quipped to several people, in several moments of over-confidence and anticipated excitement, the kind that often oozes out of those who think they have “bought” the “shit-stem” or are on the verge of one of their ill-gotten, under-hand, sweet deals.

These are the kinds of comments that came from the MD of Messrs. Allied Home Stores, the protégé of Nana Osabarima Ansah Sasraku III, the scheming Board Chairman of Metro Mass Limited, who featured prominently but unfavourably in the last piece I wrote. In that reportage, I raised questions on the nature of the relationship between the Board Chairman at Metro Mass and Messrs. Allied Home Stores Limited. Our continuing investigations reveal some seriously disturbing events and trends.

To understand what is happening, one must go to the heart of the essence of what is popularly known as National Competitive Bidding. While there appears to be a rather simple and ostensibly transparent general framework, which is then adopted by every public organization, keeping key policy provisions in place, what happened at Metro Mass, in the deal involving the supply of bus tyres, which Messrs. Allied Home Stores supposedly “won”, was to simply set aside the National Competitive Bidding criteria and award the contract unilaterally, exclusively and directly to Messrs. Allied Home Stores Ltd, through the conspired insistence of both the Board Chairman Nana Osabarima Ansah Sasraku III and Deputy MD John Awuku Dzuazah. Indeed, others contend it amounted to an order. It is an action that is absolutely worrying not just for the future of Metro Mass, but for the future of this country as well, for it amounts to robbery of the crudest kind, if there’s a kinder alternative robbery.

The rot in the current saga at Metro Mass didn’t start recently. It came, at least, since the appointment of Nana Ansah Sasraku III as Board Chairman, in the form of excessively frequent Board meetings, almost on a monthly basis although no emergency which would have warranted such frequent meetings exists, according officers at Metro Mass who spoke anonymously. They further revealed that against the objections of the Managing Director, the Board Chairman, practically set up shop within the premises of Metro Mass, ostensibly to hold Board meetings. In practice, Board meetings are not a frequent occurrence. They take place probably once or in urgent circumstances twice a year, but no more than three times annually. In Metro Mass’s case, there have been up to 9 Board Meetings this year alone; effectively more than 50% of the year, Board meetings have been held at Metro Mass, and 100% of the time, “Procurement” featured prominently on the “agenda”, in complete disregard of the financial and procurement plans set up formally. The incentive for this overzealous Board were primarily the sitting allowances and the opportunity to feast, and of course the overriding consideration of shoveling contracts to undeserving companies who provide kick-backs to their point-men on the Board, notably, the Board Chairman.

Here was a Board Chairman interested in a company (Messrs. Allied Home Stores Ltd) to become a sort of de facto “sole sourcer” to Metro Mass with kick-backs to him; here was a Deputy MD increasingly consumed by his over-ambition to wrestle his boss’s job from him. That’s a perfect meeting of minds, but a corrupt one at that. So if the Board Chairman could somehow endorse and help engineer the ouster of the current MD John Appiah, and in his place put John Dzuazah there, the kind of procurement process promoted by the Board Chairman would become the order of the day. Thus, a quid pro quo alliance of the corrupt kind is born, at the taxpayer’s expense, and explains how the two persons have become the central force in the putsch to get rid of Mr. John Appiah.

Our investigations further revealed that it is perhaps a pervading practice across public institutions in this country, involving even such simple procurements as printing diaries and calendars. In years gone by, the diaries and calendars used by many public servants in their offices were those of private sector companies, which the latter gave out as a way of marketing their company’s services. I remember how civil servants used to scramble for diaries and calendars at the beginning of the year. Today, the practice is dominated by public sector institutions – Parliament, the Ministries and their related agencies – all printing their own diaries and calendars. The strategy is another quite simple looting system. The contract for printing is unilaterally awarded and almost immediately, the winner grabs a passport, gets a visa and heads out to China, where we are reliably informed there exist a full range of printing services from the shoddiest to the best quality. Obtaining the shoddy one often nets the supplier as much as seventy per cent (70%) of the bidding price, or even more. Part of the benefits then end up with the officer who awarded the contract and his/her political patrons. The outcome is a huge dent in the National Purse. It is robbery - robbery of our collective resources to pay a few corrupt and conniving officials and cronies. That is the same scheme in play in the award of the tyre contract at Metro Mass.

Many honest public servants caught in this web of crooked bidding schemes say the process of Competitive Bidding has become a deceptive process that makes innocent suppliers spend a lot of resources and time, when another supplier has already been assured of the contract whether he/she meets requirements of the bid process or not. In the Metro Mass tyre supply saga, I can report that upwards of 30 different suppliers initially submitted bids, only to realize that there was even no effort made to screen the total list of the suppliers. The bids were simply dumped in the trash, obviously because Messrs. Allied Home Stores was already earmarked for the contract. Information reaching us indicate other suppliers who feared the process was rigged in favour of one supplier are currently seriously considering Court action to seek justice and fair play on the matter. If this matter does not end decisively with Metro Mass, then we are perhaps reeling disastrously towards another Judgment Debt issue, all at the taxpayer’s cost.

Obviously, at the centre of many of these schemes are procurement officers, which is not to say that all of them are ultimately willing participants in these schemes, but it will be interesting to find out what they know. Attempts to get to the Head of Procurement for further clarifications on the Metro Mass deal were not entirely successful. However, persons intimately familiar with procurement matters at Metro Mass report that she was in the last few days hurriedly transferred and given a day’s notice to handover. The question is, was she transferred as punishment for her resistance or was she a participant in the crooked deal and thus transferred in order to keep her from testifying in investigations currently being called for by outraged suppliers, Unions and other interested parties?

There seems also to be a testosterone overdose at Metro Mass. Several persons speaking on strict anonymity say they have seen evidence of sexual seduction and harassment visited upon several female workers at Metro Mass, including the recently transferred Head of Procurement, who investigations reveal, vigorously resisted attempts of certain key male players in the scheme to seduce and harass her, evidence of which was captured on a number of mobile devices. An interesting twist to this matter is the possibility that sex may have been involved as others report that she has been the victim of repeated unwanted sexual advances. Investigations on this angle continue, but if these allegations are true then this is an even lower point to which certain people have descended at Metro Mass. Is Nana Ansah Sasraku’s Board merely a gangster operation?

Last week, we awoke to the news that the ECG Director was fired or re-assigned, due to the disruptive, erratic load-shedding cycle citizens have been subjected to, albeit the merits of that decision are still in abeyance. In the sensational reporting on the arrest of a drug mule, in which the Narcotics Control Board fumbled around like a drunken person, we have awoken to dissolution of the entire Board of NACOB by the President. In this particular action by the President, is it because the NACOB mess affects the President and his family directly? And is it because it has to do with drugs, which political opponents will more gladly like to tag this President with, in an overzealous tit-for-tat scheme? Granted, the news reports on this drug issue have been a mess, with no fact-checking whatsoever and I believe the attempt to connect the President to this matter does not even qualify as a “stretch”; it is disingenuous. But other innocent persons, charged with the responsibility of managing Metro Mass profitably, are facing enormous obstruction to doing their job well, from individuals who are just as criminal as the drug queens and crooked politicians trying to tag the UK arrest unto the President. Boards serve at the pleasure of the President. Corrupt, irresponsible or inept boards have no place in corporations; the President is right to fire the NACOB Board. We await what President Mahama will do about the Metro Mass Board – a Board which has, through its Chairman, usurped the functions and procedures of procurement at the company, while pushing contracts to a single company, and creating an atmosphere of unwarranted tension between himself, the executive arm of the company and the general employee population, which has become a serious distraction to productive work.

We will continue to follow this story and wherever the facts lead, we will bring them to you. We are still verifying a lead that someone in a key role in the President’s office, exploiting his occupation of that role and without the President’s knowledge, is using his role to enable the Board Chairman’s and the Deputy MD’s moves at Metro Mass. We want to be certain of the allegations on this angle, just as we have often done, before we publish, and will do so impartially. Investigations continue.

Francis Dery

Email: deryfrancis@yahoo.com