By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 25, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

After his Tsikata about turn, in the matter of some illegal severance payments made to the fired and convicted former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, I have come to the sobering conclusion that it is not worth a hill of beans for me, or anybody else, for that matter, to attempt to go to the defense of Mr. K. T. Hammond, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Adansi-Asokwa. Lest I be accused of some sort of bias, let me also quickly add that at least some two or three other former GNPC executives, including Ms. Esther Cobbah (aka Mrs. Tsatsu Tsikata), have been named in the aforesaid illegal severance payments. I shall return to this matter in due course.

For now, however, our focus is on Mr. Hammond’s claim that he and some colleagues were criminally misled into approving the controversial AMERI Group thermal power-generating turbines contract that reportedly cost the Ghanaian taxpayer some $510 million, when the entire contract could have been settled for only some $220 million. I have already amply touched on this most scandalous excuse of a contractual agreement in a previous article, and so I do not intend to rehash the same here. Suffice it to note, however, that the $510 million AMERI Group turbine-purchasing heist would not have become the controversial subject that it is today, if the two Norwegian journalists of the VG newspaper had not heroically exposed this inescapably embarrassing scam for what it veritably is – a deliberate ploy by some key operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to take Ghanaians for a ride.
This is not the first time that a foreign media establishment has exposed a National Democratic Congress government scam against the people of Ghana. There was, for instance, the case of the cement factory fraud allegedly perpetrated against the longsuffering Ghanaian taxpayer under the blind watch of NDC founding father Chairman Jerry John Rawlings. The latter, however, only came to light after Mr. Rawlings had officially exited the scene. In the AMERI Group scam, Mr. Hammond, the ranking New Patriotic Party Member on the Parliamentary Mines and Energy Committee, vacuously claims that his committee was egregiously misled into unwisely approving the belatedly recognized controversial deal because the Power Ministry failed to provide full details of the transaction to committee members.

That may well have been the case; but it still does not exonerate these parliamentarians from their flagrant failure of diligent oversight of all government proposals presented to the august House for approval prior to their execution. In other words, what prevented Mr. Hammond and his colleagues on the Mines and Energy Committee in Parliament from asking for the full details of the Flagstaff House’s deal with the Dubai-based AMERI Group middleman before giving their blessings or unreserved approval to the same? And now we are told by the Norwegian VG reporters that the Ghanaian taxpayer has been stuck with a profit-margin bill of some $290 million that is worth far more than the market value of the purchases involved.

As of why the Mahama government decided to criminally contract a transactional middleman, when the government could have directly entered into an agreement with the U.S.-based General Electric Company (GE), the manufacturer of the thermal power-generating turbines, continues to be hotly debated even as I write. I, however, partly agree with Nana Ato Dadzie’s observation on the need for Parliament to be strengthened to ensure that such patent acts of criminality do not continue with impunity (See “Parliament Partly Responsible for Corruption – Ato Dadzie” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/24/15).

I only partially agree with Mr. Ato Dadzie because as a senior member of the so-called NDC Legal Defense Team, Mr. Dadzie’s primary role here is to run strategic interference for the Flagstaff House whenever the Mahama government comes under such damning scrutiny as the current one involving not only the AMERI Group heist, but also the GHC 3.6 million rebranding of some 116 MMT buses. What I am equally worried about here and that which only a dispiritingly few Ghanaians seem to be presently concerned about, is how to retrieve the GHC 52 million forensically established scamming of the Ghanaian taxpayer by Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the globally notorious National Democratic Congress’ chief underwriter.

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