Gloria Akuffo, Attorney General and Minister of Justice
A group calling itself Coalition of New Patriotic Party (NPP) Footsoldiers Against Corruption has expressed anger at the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Gloria Akuffo for failing to prosecute officials of the previous Mahama administration who have been accused of corruption.
The convener of the coalition Samuel Kwarteng and other members Eric Adu Fosu, Mmabila Nyaaba, Nana Afia and Bismark Gyamfi, in a statement, said “almost two years into our government, there is very little to show for the numerous endemic corrupt cases which we trumpeted back then.
They said “one of the many reasons which brought the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to power was the massive corruption in the erstwhile Mahama administration.”
Concerns
“In opposition, we justifiably listed a wide range of corrupt deals that the Mahama government was involved in. Ghanaians listened to our cries because it was glaring to everybody that Mahama and his people were corrupt to the brim.”
Chief among the corruption scandals were the fraudulent payment of $35 million to Alfred Woyome by former Attorney General, Betty Mould-Iddrisu and her deputy, Ebo Barton Odro, payment of $30 million to Messrs Waterville, Isofoton scandal, $36 million SUBAH deal for no work done, Dzifa Attivor and her GH¢3.6 million bus branding saga, misappropriation of MASLOC funds, GYEEDA’s payment of $100 million to Better Ghana Management Services, Zeera.”
The rest were the $10 billion STX Housing Deal, the GH¢29.23 million Nima Drainage Project, inflated $85 million Kwame Nkrumah Circle Interchange, the inflated $172.6 million Kasoa Interchange project, the inflated $100 million Tamale International Airport project, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, Kojo Adu Asare and their looting of our funds during the Brazil World Cup, inflated costs of many projects, including the Terminal 3 at KIA, the inflated $88 million Embraer 190 jet bought by Mahama, the Ford Expedition scandal, which was as a result of the contract awarded to Djibril Kanazoe by Mahama and the shoddy work on the Eastern Corridor Road and the stinking numerous SADA deals.
They cited the $9 million contract to supply Rlg laptops to Roland Agambire, most of which were never supplied, the $18 million contract to Asongtaba, the secret and illegal lodging of $250 million in UBA, the Karpower deal and the infamous Ameri deal and a host of other corrupt deals of the administration.
Apart from that, they said “since we came to power, several discoveries have also been made in many entities in which corruption can be detected with the double salary saga, which hit some past ministers who were also MPs as a case in reference.
The party’s footsoldiers said “we have come to realize that the Attorney General, Madam Gloria Akuffo and her deputies are either not interested in prosecuting these landmark cases or lack the competence to do so.”
Caveat
“We, in this coalition, are asking the Attorney General to leave her office if she thinks she cannot handle these cases because her lackluster performance is giving us headache.”
They also appealed to President Akufo-Addo to, as a matter of urgency, order the Attorney General to live up to expectation or sack her and the lieutenants.
“We are losing the moral courage to tell Ghanaians the NDC is a bad case when it comes to corruption, and the refrain has always been ‘prosecute them if they are corrupt,” they said..
“We are tired of hearing that the NDC was corrupt. If they were corrupt as we all know they were, then prosecute them.”
They wondered why Ms Gloria Akuffo was refusing to prosecute corrupt former government officials.
Is she in bed with them or what?” they asked rhetorically.
Leadership of the Coalition gave the Attorney General up to the end of this month to prosecute the corrupt officials or resign her post together with her two deputies for a more competent team to handle the cases.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu