All the rot related to the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) is traceable to President John Mahama, thus, his reluctance to prosecute his “kinsmen and others who raped the public purse,” former Attorney General Martin Amidu has said.
SADA is an independent agency set up to coordinate a comprehensive development agenda for the northern savannah ecological zone in Ghana. The area comprises the three regions up north: Upper East, Upper West and the Northern and stretches to include districts contiguous to the Northern Region that are located North of Brong-Ahafo and north of the Volta Region.
The agency’s main thrust is to promote sustainable development using the notion of a forested and green north to catalyse climate change reversal and improve livelihoods of the most vulnerable citizens in the area. The strategy being developed was to provide opportunities for poor peasants, especially women, to own assets in economic trees, sustain their food crop production and protect the fragile eco-system of the northern savannah by managing the flood-prone river-beds better.
The whole programme was, however, fraught with corruption. About GHS15million was frittered on a guinea fowl project in 2012. The fowls could, however, not be accounted for. They allegedly took off to neighbouring Burkina Faso. Additionally, GHS32million was wasted on an afforestation programme which never saw the light of day.
In his latest article, Mr Amidu accused President Mahama of being part of the pilfering of state funds through the SADA project. “Let us look at examples of how the incumbent President has plundered the public purse. Do you remember SADA where the President’s own kinsmen and others who raped the public purse have never been dealt with? Why? Because the President could not see to its prosecution since the President is himself tainted by it. Do you recall the other projects such as the forestation of northern Ghana and the guinea fowls being reared for Upper East Region; projects that never existed and which were corrupt practices traceable to the President himself. And so once again, he protected his friends.”
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PLEA TO FELLOW CITIZENS TO USE REPRESENTATIVE ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY TO VOTE FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT OF INTEGRITY ON 7TH DECEMBER 2016: BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
Fellow citizens, no one will be surprised about yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling which has stayed my examination of Alfred Agbesi Woyome. As predicted, the Court has granted the stay of proceedings and adjourned the examination to 15th December 2016 – a significant date, because it occurs well after Ghana’s elections.
The incumbent Government that architected the create, loot and share scheme from which Woyome benefitted, could not allow details to emerge in an oral examination of Woyome under oath because of the consequences it would have for the incumbent President who is contesting the 2016 Presidential elections.
Instead, as I foretold in all my entreaties to the public over the past few weeks, the looters and lootee of Ghana’s public purse have done everything in their power to ensure the Court’s earlier order for me to examine Woyome on oath has been overturned before 7th December 2016. Even though I had anticipated this outcome, it was important that I should stand up and take this fight over the integrity of the public purse to our highest Court.
It has not been easy to step up and take on an adversary who holds power through the highest position in the land. Yet it mattered that someone should speak up for the Republic and its citizens whose pockets continue to be plundered so that only a few benefit unconstitutionally, while the ordinary people of Ghana face growing economic hardship year over year. Remember that after the Supreme Court ruled and ordered in my favour, the President of Ghana himself descended into the affray to castigate the Court and praise his Attorney General who had just lost the argument alongside their surrogate lootee, Woyome.
Woyome in tandem with attack dogs let loose by the President’s intervention also took to the media to castigate and cast aspersions on both the Supreme Court and my person. Woyome then vowed to fight to the last drop of his blood to ensure that the Order for me to examine him on oath would be overturned before 7th December 2016.
As avowed, Woyome filed and served me in the court room with an application to reverse the Court’s order, and a stay of proceedings pending the hearing of the application on the very 24th November 2016, the day I was meant to examine him. The examination was adjourned to 1st December 2016. Yesterday, 1st December 2016, the Court heard the arguments from both parties amidst personal insinuations on the Judge hearing the application for stay of proceedings. Woyome’s lawyer asked the Judge outright why he the Judge appeared to have problems with Woyome’s case. After Woyome’s lawyer finished arguing for the stay, the Court asked the Attorney General’s representative whether Government objected to the application for stay.
Not surprisingly her answer was: “NO MY LORD”. Meaning they were in bed with Woyome all along. I stood up and argued that even though the Court had discretion to stay proceedings, the Court should on this occasion refuse the application because Woyome, who has already been declared to have unconstitutionally looted the public purse of over GHC51.2million, was coming to the Court with dirty hands and asking to be granted the equitable relief of stay of proceedings. I urged that the representative democratic process guaranteed by the Constitution required the public to hear of Woyome’s means and property and the reasons why Woyome had refused to pay back the monies more than two years after the Court’s order to Woyome to do so.
Alas, the stay was granted, as I had predicted. Fellow citizens, the technical processes of the law have been used to ensure Woyome does not take the stand before 7th December 2016. It is true that the efforts of the President and Woyome have succeeded in preventing you from hearing in examination on oath what happened to the public purse looted by the John Mahama Government for their Lootee, Woyome.
But the Constitution provides you with one important chance to ensure that this President does not have the opportunity ever again to protect his lootee, Woyome, from refunding their unconstitutional loot. Right now you have the power to change this incumbent President at the Presidential elections on 7th December 2016. Should you vote for this looter President on 7th December 2016 we cannot get our over GHC51.2million back with the accruing interest because he would continue to protect Woyome as he has done since assuming office.
As the Citizen Vigilante, I have done everything I could to use the constitutional process to compel Woyome to pay back the monies he owes to the people of Ghana. Now I ask that you use Ghana’s democratic process to stand up for what’s right, and to protect the public purse from being plundered with impunity by the incumbent Government whose conduct has been found to be unconstitutional right alongside the likes of people like Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
The representative democratic process provided for in our Constitution gives citizens the power to change corrupt Governments and public purse looters like this President’s Government once every four years at the Presidential elections. Vote this President out on 7th December 2016 so that we do not need any further examination orally on oath of Woyome by me in person for you to get your money back. The new Government will have the duty of getting your money back in the shortest possible time because of the confidence you would have reposed in it. Do we wait another four years while a John Mahama Government drags its feet and shields the very lootees it has helped?
Fellow Citizens, if you vote the incumbent President back into power after 7th December 2016, I can assure you that no examination on oath by me will ever get your money back again. You will be re-electing a Government that has been deceiving you about its intention to retrieve even a pesewa. This is why if we want our money back plus every interest on it we must vote for a new President on 7th December 2016. Up until now I have preferred to concentrate on the loot of GHC51.2million by the Government for Woyome with Austro-Invest, the incumbent Attorney General’s former client, and the Waterville case with over €47million unconstitutional loot by this Government again for Waterville.
Fellow citizens, any time I have urged you to vote for a new President, we are met with the Government machinery reframing that this President has fought corruption and brought development. I now take up the invitation to address those lies about the incumbent President’s position on corruption that plunders public coffers, and to set the records straight. The lies about the incorruptibility of this President do not hold up to scrutiny against the available evidence. Just visit my website and read my article dated 8th October 2012 titled: “Reporting a sitting President or Government to any public institution to be investigated for corruption” for evidence of this President and his Government’s irredeemable corruption.
Let us look at examples of how the incumbent President has plundered the public purse. Do you remember SADA where the President’s own kinsmen and others who raped the public purse have never been dealt with? Why? Because the President could not see to its prosecution since the President is himself tainted by it. Do you recall the other projects such as the forestation of northern Ghana and the guinea fowls being reared for Upper East Region; projects that never existed and which were corrupt practices traceable to the President himself. And so once again, he protected his friends.
Take time to analyse the Atuabo Free Port Agreement and you cannot fail to see the corruption embodied in it with Government institutions like SNNIT, GHAPOHA and others being forced to contribute to the free carried interest which the foreign beneficiary was to pay to the Government of Ghana. When some MPs went to Court to question the contract, President Mahama said online that David Cameron, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had helped him, the President, to get Lonrho to invest in Ghana. What the President failed to reveal was that he and his other Ministers had personally made several personal visits to Lonrho in Mauritius on the matter. It was an enterprise of corruption. Show us just one conviction resulting from this incumbent President’s so called anti-corruption campaign.
This President pretends to prosecute only those he dislikes like Abuga Pele, the MP for Paga, and a few others. But he only uses the pretended prosecutions to whip his wayward Party members into line. Heed well, they say past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour. John Mahama is not a newcomer to the corrupt practice of aiding the looting of the public purse. As a condition for President Mills signing the controversial executive consent to permit the E. O. Group to assign its $300million shares to Tullow, the E.O. Group agreed to pay $13million to the Government for the development of the Western Region, and they called it corporate social responsibility. It was John Mahama (as the Vice President) who orchestrated the unlawful deal which I refused to endorse as the Attorney General at the time. It was Mahama who ensured that the $13million was paid not to the Government of Ghana for the benefit of the people, but into private pockets – which the late President Mills was shocked to hear shortly before his death. So what is the talk of anti-corruption by this incumbent President Mahama? During his tenure, Ben Kumbour who succeeded me as Attorney General refused to give the indemnity that was demanded from me by this President (then as Vice President). The indemnity was given in December 2014 when the late Miss Aikins (who was DPP when I was Attorney General) was ordered to produce that criminal case docket I had left in her custody to an officer of the Attorney General’s office upon the instructions of this President. We are told this President is incorruptible? Tell it to the marines.
Let me remind the public that the late Prof. Mills became convinced of the necessity to set up a committee to investigate the hue and cry about the prices for the acquisition of five (5) aircraft for the Ghana Armed Forces in July 2011. A Committee to Investigate the Processes of the Acquisition of Five Aircrafts (5) including Embraer 190 Aircraft and hanger for the Ghana Armed Forces consisting of Mr. William Aboah, Mr. George Amoah, and Brig. Gen. Allotey (Rtd) and former Judge Advocate-General, was put together. President Mills asked me to instruct and draft the terms of reference for the Committee as follows: “(i) to investigate the processes adopted in selecting, negotiating, and agreeing on the acquisition of the aircrafts; (ii) to investigate the competitive advantage, prices of the aircrafts and the level of economic and financial due diligence conducted by relevant agencies in the process of acquisition of the aircrafts; and (iii) to investigate any other matter that in the opinion of the Committee is reasonably related to the foregoing terms of reference.”
The suspected corruption involving President Mahama, then the Vice President, was covered up because pressure groups never allowed the Committee to take off. The future of the Committee was compromised for good when upon becoming President, this President appointed the Chairman of the Committee as his National Security Adviser, whom he dispensed with not long after to shut him up. The revelations of endemic corruption in Brazil over the past few years should alert everyone as to what happened during the aircraft purchases from Brazil. It is not too late. A new Government can look into it again. The National Anti-Corruption Action Plan? See my website for comments. Nothing concrete has happened except white washing Government corruption. The Code of Conduct for Public Officers was work in progress under Mills and has never been enacted. In spite of it, Ministers who are accused of corruption in the award of contracts for bus rebranding are simply asked to resign. Is that the famous fight this President conducts against corruption which strips Ghana’s public coffers bare?
What of the Ford Expedition saga? As he himself has said, John Mahama truly did not need a Ford Expedition. Why then was the Ford Expedition sent to the President through the Ghana Ambassador to Burkina Faso? One just has to read the letter from the Ghana Embassy to Burkina Faso to the border authorities at Paga which was dated 29th October 2012 and use common sense and the answer is obvious. Mahama had just assumed office after Mills’ death and he was going into elections unprepared financially. However, the President’s friend and beneficiary of contracts when the President had just assumed office was ready to provide financial support. The only way funds could be unconstitutionally imported into Ghana from Burkina Faso was to be ingenious: through the Ford Expedition as the wrapper wrapping the many dollars needed for the Mahama campaign. No searches. No questions. The dollars are retrieved from the vehicle in Accra. The Ford Expedition is useless thereafter to the President.
CHARAJ had no jurisdiction but the President was too happy to have his own institution purport to clear him. A farce to make the public believe the President has the people’s interests at heart, and that his institutions will protect the public purse – while all the while it covered an unconstitutional scheme at election time. Fight against corruption indeed! These loose interpretations of corruption define the nature of an incumbent President who is seeking to be re-elected. An incumbent President who places his own interests and those of his friends and cronies ahead of the very people he is sworn to protect. An incumbent President who willfully and intentionally aids individuals such as Alfred Agbesi Woyome, and Waterville to freely loot and plunder the public purse with impunity. Let me strengthen my Citizen Vigilante fight by asking you, the people, to join together as you vote on 7th December to keep the integrity of the public purse safe from the likes of an incumbent President who has not hesitated to facilitate and conceal a range of unconstitutional actions that in the end always leave the people of Ghana poorer. Use your vote on 7th December to make a change in your own interest. Vote for a new President because you no longer need an incumbent President who is not accountable to the people who give him his power. Vote to get your looted money back, with interest. Vote John Dramani Mahama out as President of Ghana. Vote to uphold the Constitution that protects the Republic and the people of Ghana.
Put Ghana First!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu 2 nd December 2016
