A Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament, Dr. Clement Apaak, has alleged that the Minister of Education is protecting someone who made a placement to a Grade A school in exchange for GH¢7,000 in the alleged corruption-related issues surrounding the school placement system.

The MP for Builsa South noted that per his reading of the leaked report on the probe into the matter, the testimony by Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, who was the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) at the time of the placement and the Ministry of Education’s investigative committee’s sitting a fraudulent payment made for the placement of a student into a category “A” school in 2022 was traced to the login access of the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum.

He said although Prof. Opoku-Amankwa and the Minister were the only ones who had unfettered access to the computer system and could place or approve placement of students into category “A” Schools, it did not stop the corruption.

The lawmaker stated that efforts to obtain the report had been futile until it was leaked.

“Prof. Opoku-Amankwa admitted before the committee that if the placement was sold, it meant that whoever had access to the system to the Grade A schools would have used his pin code or that of the Minister. He was locked out of the system at some point after filing the complaint and conducting the investigation. This meant that only one person had access to the Grade A schools, and that person was the Minister of Education.”

He quoted the report saying “He [Prof Opoku-Amankwa] sighted an example in one of the cases that were reported that an amount of GH¢7000 had been charged to place someone at Wesley Girls or Achimota School. A probe using the log report on the system showed that it was done with the Hon. Minister’s access which was being handled by Ms. Vera Amoah.”

“Prof Amankwah went on to say that subsequently, his permission to the log port on the placement system was blocked and so could not trace and act on complaints that came in thereafter.”

According to Dr. Apaak, “the Minister refused or failed or did not volunteer the identities of those he had given his pin code to access the system, and so the point I am making is this, if Prof. and the Minister both agreed that they were the two who had access to Grade A schools and one was logged out, and he was able to determine that the Minister’s code was used to log in for the exchange of money and the Minister could not reveal the identities of those who accessed the system, then he is shielding somebody.”

He also alleged that the committee that investigated the matter lacked the necessary expertise to reach conclusions about corruption.

He stated that the committee’s work was not exhaustive because the company in charge of the system refused to provide data to the committee, and those who investigated the matter were all Ministry employees who could not have indicted their own boss.

“The committee faced difficulties in investigating the matter because the Minister is their boss. We need an external entity, the Special Prosecutor, to conduct a proper investigation if we are to get to the bottom of this. If the Minister refuses to reveal the identity of the person to whom he gave his pin code, he clearly cannot be in office. That is the basis of our appeal.”