Concerns are being raised about the propriety of President John Mahama’s continuous showering of expensive gifts on Akua Donkor, founder of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), with no known proper structures.
This was after the woman, who some political pundits think has become a nuisance in the country’s political space because of her comical gimmick, confessed to having been given two four-wheel drive vehicles and a house by President Mahama – at a time when secondary schools are facing the threat of being closed down because of government’s inability to pay students’ feeding grants.
She told Adom Fm’s Kofi Adoma that President Mahama had dashed her a 3-bedroom mansion at Sakumono, near Tema and two Mitsubishi Pajero vehicles for her comfort.
This is what baffles the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), which thinks it is a wanton dissipation of the tax payers’ money on a wasteful venture, calling on the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to step in.
In a statement, Communications Director of the party, Nana Akomea said, “This is a prime instance of the waste of public funds that has been a feature of President Mahama’s government,” and called for an investigation into the issue by the CHRAJ.
“The NPP calls on the CHRAJ to investigate this waste of taxpayers’ resources that is of no benefit whatsoever to the taxpayer.”
“The reckless dissipation of taxpayers’ monies has become too rampant.”
He recalled a recent incident in which another founder of a political party, Akwasi Addai popularly known as Odike of the United Progressive Party (UPP), was also heard on tape making disclosures of some huge monies that he expected the NDC to pay his party.
Meanwhile, sometime last week, reports emerged that NDC constituency executives contracted to see to the school feeding programme were being paid colossal amounts of taxpayers’ money, even though no cooking and feeding were done.
In some of the districts like Afram Plains, Garu Tempane, school children have started dropping out of school as a result.
A report presented to the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament in March 2016, indicated that the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC) had paid a rent of GH¢5 million (50 billion old cedis) for just one year, when such an amount could easily build permanent offices for the company.
That is aside the government committing GH¢3.6 million to brand Metro Mass Transit buses with coloured pictures of President Mahama and NDC campaign slogans.
What seemed to pain Nana Akomea was the fact that “All of these wanton wastes of public resources seem to be the tip of the iceberg, and are taking place when this nation is in crises and deprivation,” while the economy is on life support from the IMF.
Interestingly, sometime last week, government went to parliament to make a request for extra budgetary allocation.
It therefore beats Nana Akomea’s imagination that street lights in Accra and other major cities do not work, while thousands of ‘kayayei’ (head porters) sleep in the open by the streets of the capital city; the National Health Insurance Scheme remains underfunded; secondary schools risk closure and thousands of students risk being sent home because government is not able to pay feeding grant; public basic schools lack chalk; newly trained nurses are not employed due to lack of finances, with major hospitals frequently lacking oxygen, reagents and incubators for infants.
To the NPP, “The wanton waste and corruption in the face of deprivation of Ghanaians are a testimony to the failure of government,” and therefore, asked Ghanaians to ensure that President Mahama and the NDC are not given four more years of this failure, incompetence and corruption.