By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. English Department, SUNY-Nassau Garden City, New York February 18, 2017 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I have already written quite extensively about the seizure of some 5 cars belonging to Mr. Kofi Adams, the turd-trading National Organizer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), and so I shall not be unnecessarily repetitive in the present column. Not that this political upstart deserves the time and newsprint and digitized cyberspace and energy devoted to the aforementioned incident. What brought me back to the same issue, once again, concerns a statement that Mr. Adams is reported to have made in answer to a query by the host of a radio talk-show. Asked by the host of the Accra-based “Citi Eyewitness News” program whether, indeed, all the 5 cars allegedly seized by elements from the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had been bought with his own money, Mr. Adams is reported to have riposted that it did not matter whether he actually forked up his own money to purchase all 5 cars involved in the raid (See “It Doesn’t Matter Who Bought My 5 Cars – Kofi Adams” Citifmonline.com 2/2/17).

For a man who once served as the housekeeper and the post-Victor Smith spokesman for Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his family, Mr. Adams has the luxury of youth to excuse him from making such an outrageous remark. Maybe somebody much older and wiser than he is ought to remind him about those “Probity, Transparency, Justice and Accountability” days, when hundreds of hardworking Ghanaian citizens lost their properties and bank accounts because they could not produce receipts and documents proving their ownership of such properties, or how they came by any penny deposited in those bank accounts. Others no so fortunate would be executed by firing squad because they had committed the capital “revolutionary” crime of owing bank loans or simply being indebted with public institutional lenders. I don’t know if Chairman Rawlings heard his uppity former butler make such remark and, if he did, what he thought about the same.

Mr. Adams has gone from claiming cavalierly that of the 5 vehicles, including 2 Toyota Land Cruisers, estimated to be each worth $ 50,000, and a pick-up were owned by him, to claiming that only one of the 5 vehicles was his personal property, and that the other 4 vehicles were used at party headquarters to have his staff of subordinates and minions perform errands. Now, what the foregoing means is that at least 4 or 80-percent of the cars parked in his house belong to the National Democratic Congress, and not himself, even though he also claims that all 5 vehicles are registered in his name, which effectively makes him the owner of all 5 cars. This is where the imperative need for Parliament and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to require the strict and periodic auditing of all legitimately registered political parties in the country comes in. for what we are clearly confronted with here is the possibility of the fact that Mr. Adams could well be guilty of either the misappropriation or outright embezzlement of funds and properties belonging to the publicly supported National Democratic Congress.

If the preceding observation is proven to contain any iota of validity, then the 2016 National Coordinator of his party’s political campaign may very well be guilty of fraud. What the preceding also eerily reflects is the sort of abject lack of efficient record-keeping that has led to the newly-elected Akufo-Addo government’s uncovering of millions of dollars in wasteful spending and what clearly appears to be outright embezzlement by the outgone Mahama regime, including the $ 14 million profligately budgeted cost of a vice-presidential villa that was never debated in the House, and was not opened up for cost-effective competitive bidding, and the GH? 7 billion budgetary expenditure that was never reconciled with the GIFMIX-centralized government database, which at least one former Deputy Finance Minister claimed to be the fastest and most efficient system of record-keeping around the globe to-date.

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