By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 8, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
At long last, the day of reckoning has arrived for the embattled Commissioner of Ghana's Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). The judicial investigative committee established by Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, and headed by Justice Anin Yeboah, if I heard the news report correctly, will begin sitting tomorrow on the matter of whether, indeed, the CHRAJ Commissioner, Ms. Lauretta Vivian Lamptey, grossly and deliberately misappropriated funds meant for the studious conduct of her job as head of the country's foremost judicial institution specially charged with investigating accusations of corruption brought against highly placed public servants and politicians involving conflicts of interest and human rights abuses, among a host of others (See "Lauretta Lamptey Has a Chance to Defend Herself - Ayikoi Otoo" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/8/15).
I have been quite closely observing events play out from my distant perch right here in the United States. And what is fascinating is that until I decided to put this column together, presently, it hadn't occurred to me that some of Ms. Lamptey's most ardent detractors, including at least two members of parliament and a locally renowned political activist, had been deftly dancing around with figures to make the CHRAJ Commissioner appear in a dimmer light than she might otherwise have been, in the wake of the media's breaking of what has putatively come to be known as Lampteygate, or the Lauretta Lamptey Scandal.
In the main, the latter involves the alleged misappropriation of some $180,000 (One-Hundred-And-Eighty-Thousand U.S. Dollars) in the form of annual rental charges for a hotel suite that the CHRAJ Commissioner decided to use as a temporary official residence, while her government-owned official residence was being renovated. What is quite fascinating here is the manner in which the facts surrounding the case have been twisted to make the woman seem like Jezebel's Double. Now it turns out that the $180,000 in question was actually expended on the renovation of Ms. Lamptey's official residence. And not too long ago, the Chief Accountant of CHRAJ was widely reported by the media to have said that the CHRAJ boss had not made any official request for monetary reimbursement of any sort. Well, it would not be very long before we find out the exact details of what is really at issue here.
For her hotel suite, we are told the monthly rent was about $5,000 (Five-Thousand U.S. Dollars), which puts the annual rental charge at some $60,000. The latter figure is still, admittedly, quite high (yours truly pays nearly $30,000 [Thirty-Thousand Dollars] a year in mortgage and maintenance charges for his three-bedroom cooperative apartment in the reasonably plush residential complex he has had for some 16 years), but it is definitely not the same as $180,000. It is only a third of the figure with which her detractors have been inexorably hammering her pate for quite awhile now. And this is really not fair to both the target of the vigorous removal campaign and the Ghanaian citizenry at large.
As I observed in a previous column, the problem that gave Ms. Lamptey the pretext to rent a hotel suite, while the humongous amount of $180,000 was spent on renovating her official residence, ought to be squarely blamed on the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing and whoever else is professionally contracted to ensure that government-owned public housing is well-maintained around the clock. Justice Emile Short, the first CHRAJ Commissioner, if memory serves yours truly accurately, also has some questions to answer. For instance, when he vacated the private house that he initially rented at East Legon after he became CHRAJ Commissioner, why did Justice Short not move into his officially designated government-owned residence but instead chose to move into his own privately built home? Was the intention here to save CHRAJ and the government some money?
And also, what measures did Mr. Short take, as CHRAJ Commissioner, to ensure that well-maintained public housing was made available to his senior staff and associates? This clearly appears to me to be where this entire problem of lack of ready proper housing for the CHRAJ Commissioner, generally speaking, came about. Well, as Nii Ayikoi-Otoo, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice under the tenure of President John Agyekum-Kufuor, aptly observed in the wake of Chief Justice Wood's establishment of the judicial committee charged with investigating any financial improprieties that might have been committed by Ms. Lamptey, the substantive CHRAJ Commissioner will have her proverbial day in court tomorrow to answer her critics and detractors.
If found liable, we are told, Chief Justice Wood is obligated to forward a report to President John Dramani Mahama recommending the immediate removal of Ms. Lamptey. There is also another aspect to the case that has been virtually drowned out of the deafening din of the raging debate; and it regards the fact of whether Ms. Lamptey is competent enough to continue acting as CHRAJ Commissioner. I am curious to learn about what the Chief Justice has to say on this score as well.
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