A Petroleum Economist and Political Risk Analyst has predicted that any prosecution that will be initiated with regard to the $170 million Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) judgement debt saga, would come to nothing.

Contributing to discussions on JoyNews' NewsFile, Saturday, Dr. Theophilus Acheampong said the nature of governance, as practised in the country, would potentially serve as a stumbling block to the prosecution of any government official for the judgement debt accrued.

“I think this whole idea of prosecution and all of that realistically, I don’t think it will come to anything; it will come to nought, because of the way the political system and the governance structure and things work.

“I am inclined not to believe that anybody will actually be prosecuted based on whatever has happened. But we would end up paying the money anyway,” he said on JoyNews’ Newsfile Saturday, June 26.

He added that the mess the country finds itself in, is purely due to the lack of due diligence on the part of the state.

He stated that “we did not do a thorough enough work.”

“In fact, we went to sleep after signing the contract and we were expecting the party to have followed through on most of the conditions subsequent without realizing we needed the actual State to facilitate licenses etc.

"So eventually, what then happened was that the so-called 45 days between the signing of the contract and the things being delivered ended up being pushed forward and forward down the line,” he added.

According to him, the harm that has been caused due to the government’s lack of due diligence, only shows the failures of the governance value chain in protecting the national purse.

“So we can’t absolve, as a State or as a government, ourselves of responsibility in causing this harm in the first place.  And it shows various levels of failures along that governance value chain,” he said.

His comment comes after a London-based United Nations Commission on International Trade Law tribunal issued its final award, ordering the government of Ghana to pay a whopping $170 million in damages to GPGC for failing to meet set deadlines in contesting alleged unlawful termination of a contract between the two parties.