Before I get to the main substance of today’s article, I want to make a special appeal to the POWERS-THAT-BE IN GHANA. If it is not too late – and I don’t think it is – the 1992 Constitution should be amended to make it imperative for the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to conduct a CORRUPTION RISK ASSESSMENT for all international projects before they are placed before Parliament.

In 2020, Martin Amidu, the then-OSP, amid concerns from some civil society organisations and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), conducted an investigation into the Agyapa Royalty Transaction.

Among other wrongs, he found that the selection process for transaction advisors showed reasonable suspicion of bid-rigging, corruption, and potential illicit financial flows or money laundering; that consultations and stakeholder engagement leading up to parliamentary approval failed to meet required standards of accountability and transparency.

In his November 2020 report, Martin Amidu advised the government to halt the execution and return the transaction to Parliament for a full legal review.

That is how Ghana was saved from an economic rape.

The rape has been going on for too long. It is time Ghanaians showed our teeth to our oppressors. These are thieves who come wearing a suit or a three-piece agbada and are backed by a Constitution that guarantees their untouchability.

The latest case in point is what has happened in the USA. A federal jury in Brooklyn has convicted former Managing Director of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Asante Kwaku Berko, of conspiring to pay over $1 million in bribes to Ghanaian officials to secure a power plant contract for Turkish firm Aksa Enerji during Ghana's energy crisis in 2014.

The prosecution told the court that in April 2015, Berko and his co-conspirators discussed paying $1 million to the Minister of Power, who was responsible for securing key approvals enabling the project to progress.  Bribes were also paid to five Ghanaian officials DURING AN ALL-EXPENSES-PAID TRIP TO TURKEY (emphasis mine) to view equipment for the power plant. On that trip, the officials each received $5,000.

For the purpose of this article, I am not interested in the modus operandi of Berko. I am interested in finding out which Ghanaian public officials went to Turkey. The list is said to include Members of Parliament.

In Ghana, the OSP and the Attorney-General have given notice of their determination to investigate further. Their investigations must determine whether the officials and MPs were paid per diem allowances by their Ghanaian employers. 

Unsurprisingly, the power plant deal was approved by Ghana’s Parliament in July 2015.

(Contrast former German President Christian Wulff, who was tried and later resigned in 2013 for allowing a business friend to pay roughly €700 for his hotel stay and meals while on vacation).

‘Daily Graphic’ readers would recall that on October 12, 2015, Professor Stephen Adei, a former Rector of GIMPA, made assertions to the effect that “some Members of Parliament (MPs) collect bribes before approving projects and policies.”

Hear him: “I know that now if you want Parliament to pass anything, not only do you bribe the committee, but after they have received their share, they ask you, ‘Where is our laptop?’, meaning, provision for their girlfriends.”

Parliament threatened to haul him before its Privileges Committee for contempt. It didn’t. Shall we say it didn’t dare!

How can Ghanaians free themselves from this stranglehold? Paradoxically, the rape is being carried out by a group of powerful people – MPs, Ministers of State, CEOs of state agencies – who are so well paid that they want for nothing.

I wasn’t old enough to know, but I am told that time was, in the late 1950s and early 60s, when every other African, mostly in the UK and USA, identified themselves as Ghanaians. We were the paragon of virtue, and we had an Osagyefo, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who was feared by the West.

Then the tide turned. Ghanaians became greedy. From greed, we descended into covetousness fueled by an inordinate desire for opulence. After nearly two decades of burying our heads in the sand, Ghanaians cannot continue to deny the fact that our country has achieved immortality in corruption. The finger pointing at us used to point at Nigerians.

Today, you associate with the Ghanaian at your own risk. O, what a verdict! Nobody wants to take steps to stop it because an end to corruption means an end to the orgies. A few years ago, one “powerful” government official was pictured having a birthday bash on board a yacht on the Rhine in France.

It has now emerged that, like Covid-19, when Ghanaian government officials turned that national tragedy into a money-spinning enterprise, the Dumsor era provided an occasion for some people to feast while manufacturing firms collapsed due to a lack of power.

The day Ghanaians started spraying money on wedding couples and birthday celebrants, a culture which we learned from Nigerian movies, I knew something was about to go terribly wrong. Unfortunately, it is the economy that is taking the hit. Why? We don’t question the sources of sudden personal wealth.  

And we go to church every Sunday and to the mosque every Friday.