play videoSamuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu
Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has issued a detailed response to governor of the Bank of Ghana, Ernest Addison, with respect to his explanations on the US$250m new head office for the central bank.
In a social media post dated August 22, the lawmaker who recently published correspondence between the BoG and the Ministry of Finance insisted that the governor – who he repeatedly referred to as ‘misgovernor’ - failed to redeem himself on even one leg of the issues raised.
The lawmaker posed a series of questions he insists that the governor deliberately refused to respond to.
Among others: coming clean on the current cost of the project, failure to explain how the price escalated from initial US$81m plus to US$122m plus and the national security excuse for restricted tendering.
On the claim that the project was started when the bank was not in dire straits, Ablakwa fired back: “MisGovernor Addison claims he started his ostentatious legacy project in good times. How can anyone describe a project whose procurement process commenced in 2020 during the peak of COVID-19 as a good time?
“Actual construction began in 2021 and has continued throughout the 2022 crisis period of the central bank and in the face of Ghana’s current economic IMF-bailout bankruptcy, with the cost now three times its initial estimate — this must certainly be the definition of reckless, sleazy and destructive leadership,” he stressed.
Ablakwa reechoed the calls for Addison to resign because “we have had enough of his naked untruths. His rather belated attempt to hide under the cloak of national security won’t save him.”