Adjenim Boateng Adjei
It has now become very clear that this nation, today has very limited, if any at all, men and women with integrity to manage public institutions. As the issue of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) rages on, the question which kept running through my mind was; can this country ever have men and women who have the nation at heart to man public offices? What is this rat race all about when our dear nation is bleeding? 62 years after independence, some innocent children still study under trees and write on the bare floor. A sizeable segment of our population compete with cows for drinking water, and yet the few who have had the privilege of being educated with the tax payers’ money and offered positions of trust to help build this nation and improve the lives of the less privileged ones are rather ruining this nation.
The elite in our society are bleeding this nation to destruction such that ‘every new day, new gashes are added unto her wounds.’ The voracious dissipation of our collective resources by the few elites which leads to mass deprivation of the majority of the populace, of the basic necessities of life, is pushing the poor who are in the majority, particularly the youth, to the brink, and that is very dangerous for the stability and the collective survival of this country.
We are gradually telling the world that we cannot fashion out any policies which can be implemented so well to move this country forward because those who are so minded or paid to implement those policies choose to circumvent the rules and the processes to their benefits while the nation bleeds. And so it happened that a Talent Discovery Limited discovered an unlimited opportunity in a public institution manned by a CEO who is a 50 per cent shareholder, to discover ways of awarding contracts to itself and subsequently selling off those contracts as if they were selling maize in the lean season to kenkey producers in Bukom and Yamonransa.
That the CEO, Adjenim Boateng Adjei, alias Adjei Boateng Adjenim, alias Boateng Adjenim Adjei, alias Adjei Adjeinim Boateng, perming his name in the manner lotto stakers would perm their numbers and get a company owned by himself, his wife and brother-in-law, to circumvent the procurement processes to win contracts and turn round to sell those contracts to genuine contractors who are starved of jobs, using the same legal processes outlined by the PPA.
In the year 2003, as part of the NPP’s administration, led by President J. A. Kufuor, to fight corruption to the barest minimum, decided to pass a law, which when enforced,  will reduce if not totally eliminate corrupt practices in procurement in the public sector. The central government is the biggest procurer of goods and services in the country. This thought gave birth to the Public Procurement Act (663) of 2003, parts of which were amended in the Public Procurement (Amendment) Act, 2016 (Act 914).
The law stated unambiguously that ‘the object of the Board is to harmonise the economic and efficient use of state resources in public procurement and ensure that public procurement is carried out in a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory and environmentally and socially sustainable manner (as amended).’
This is a clear indication that the hitherto processes of public procurement lacked fairness, transparency, and was discriminatory. The exposure of the CEO and his clique of family and in-laws who at all material times had foreknowledge of the estimated cost of a contract and went ahead to tender and win those services and contracts, is nothing but a stab on the back of the underlining principles of the Authority. Instead of protecting the public purse, he punctured it to his advantage and to the detriment of the good people of Ghana.
The Act sets out 21 functions of the Board of PPA, which in my view are good enough to check the activities of the Chief Executive Officer of the Authority and also ensure transparent performance of the Authority with the view to protect the public purse. Among the functions of the Board are:
- monitor and supervise public procurement and ensure compliance with statutory requirements;
- publish a monthly Public Procurement Bulletin which shall contain information germane to public procurement, including proposed procurement notices, notices of invitation to tender and contract award information;
- present annual reports to the Minister on public procurement processes;
- maintain a register of procurement entities and members of and secretaries to tender committees of public procurement entities;
- investigate and debar from procurement practice under this Act, suppliers, contractors and consultants who have seriously neglected their obligations under a public procurement contract, have provided false information about their qualifications, or offered inducements of the kind referred to in section 32 of this Act etc etc.
The questions begging for answers are, on the number of occasions that Adjei Boateng Adjeinim presented his company’s bids to the Board and asked to recuse himself from the tender meeting because he had an interest in Talent Discovery Limited as an entity bidding for a contract, did the Board find out the degree of interest of Adjeinim Boateng Adjei in the company?  Was the Board not alarmed at the frequency with which Boateng Adjei Adjeinim recused himself each time Talent Discovery Limited presented a bid to procure a contract from the Authority?
Did the Authority at any given point in time, find out whether the Talent Discovery Limited was on site executing the contracts it had won on numerous occasions? Per my younger brother and colleague journalist’s exposure of the PPA Chief Executive Officer’s conflict of interest activity at the PPA, did it ever occur to the Board that there was something fishy about the way the CEO recuses himself each time Talent Discovery Limited, with the talent to discover juicy contracts and outbid its competitors, if any at all, meet the requirements of the bids and sales?
That one Company in the business of supplying of goods and services and construction will win 13 national contracts when there is no record of delivery, per Manasseh’s exposé and it happens each time the CEO recuses himself because he has interest and this did not prick or alert the Board that something was wrong? This, in my view, can only happen without any questioning, if it is Board room corruption at its apogee. Those who were appointed to be the gate keepers of our facility seem to have connived with criminals to rip us off. Cry my beloved country. I have had an occasion to state in this column that the elites of our nation have no integrity to protect let alone bequeath it to their children.
If people cherish their integrity, they would not engage in acts which when found out, would damage their reputation, if they have any at all, people look at their children askance, and their wives become objects of public gossip wherever they find themselves. The school mates of their children will scorn playfully at their children and make life uncomfortable for them in school.
In recent times very otherwise prominent son of this country who had gained international repute dropped down from the top and splashed on the ground like rotten mango. He is compelled to send his little kids to schools outside of Ghana. When greed surpasses need, shame is the outcome.  How are your children faring, Adjei Boateng Adjeinim?
Daavi, just some three tots for the evening.
Kb2014gh@gmail.com