The Manhyia South MP, Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, says the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been vindicated in its earlier position that the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) initiative was a waste of time and resources.

Speaking in an interview on October 22, the lawmaker questioned the usefulness of the committee and accused its members of failing to apply their expertise to the work assigned them.

“Well, let me put it in the form of a question — what was the utility of the ORAL?” he asked. “When you look at the persons forming the committee, you have Daniel Domelevo, a very highly experienced auditor and former Auditor-General, Martin Kpebu, an experienced lawyer, and Commissioner retired Kofi Boakye, an experienced security person.”

He said with such a team, the expectation was that the committee would have done a thorough job, but that was not the case.

“You had all these people on there with the current EOCO boss too there, and all they did was to receive documents and couldn’t even probe the usefulness or otherwise of the documents,” he stated. “And so they handed over the report to the President, including all garbage. Then what was the utility of it?”

The Manhyia South MP argued that the committee’s work had contributed to the mounting pressure on the Attorney General.

“It does appear that they are part of the reason why there’s a lot of pressure on the Attorney General,” he said. “And the Attorney General himself is also advancing it with the nature of information he’s putting in the public domain. I think that it’s really, really unfortunate. From what I’m hearing this evening, very unfortunate.”

He further suggested that the quality of the report handed to the Attorney General raised concerns about credibility and due diligence.

“In fact, what was given to the Attorney General was an unrefined document,” he said. “Mr. Domelevo, very respectfully, failed to bring his experience, his expertise, to bear on what he received. Mr. Kpebu failed to bring his experience to bear on what he received.”

According to him, someone with Martin Kpebu’s legal background should have been able to properly assess the documents and evidence.

“He knows what is admissible, what is inadmissible, what is the weight of an evidence,” he said. “Very respectfully, he is about 18 years at the bar and qualifies to be a judge of even the Court of Appeal. He should be in a position to evaluate documents, and so if he couldn’t, then, very respectfully, the utility of the ORAL is really problematic.”

The MP insisted that the committee’s report offered little to assist the Attorney General and that the entire exercise amounted to nothing productive.

“It was of no use to the Attorney General,” he emphasized. “I made that point from day one on your platform. Today, very respectfully, with the grace of God, I think that our position has been vindicated by the confession of Mr. Domelevo, Kofi Boakye, and Kpebu. It was a complete waste of time.”