ELECTIONS 2020: 4More 4Agyapa Royalties Deal? 

Barely a week today, Ghana shall go to the polls to elect a new leader to form government. Akufo-Addo, the incumbent, is in contention to retain his seat as the President of the Republic of Ghana. He took over from President John Dramani Mahama, after he lost Elections 2020. The Special Prosecutor , Martin Amidu, has named Akufo-Addo as the Mother Serpent of Corruption.

Akufo-Addo promised in his campaigns from 2008-16, to run an open and a transparent government. In 2016, he promised, among other things , to protect the public purse and make corruption unattractive in his government. If for any other thing he was unaware of previous scandals that characterised his government since it’s inception, Martin Amidu, the Special Prosecutor appointed by himself, has drawn his attention to a corruption risk in an assessment made on the Agyapa Royalties deal, now published. In preemptive reaction, Akufo-Addo shelved the report and referred it to parliament for a review.

The Agyapa Royalties deal, was preceded by Ghana Gold Company, conceived in 2010 by the former Minister of Finance, Dr Kwabena Duffour. Incidentally, Martin Amidu in a letter dated October 6, 2011, offered a critical legal opinion on GGC, which details of accountability, conflict of interest and functional transparency issues were thereafter pursued until the NDC left office in 2016. Thus, the Akufo-Addo government version came in readily for his assessment, when it fell on his lap as the Special Prosecutor with dedicated commitment to civic duty and public interest of the Ghana project. Besides, his corruption risk assessment on the Agyapa Royalties deal are consistent in spirit and letter of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana.

Before he published his corruption risk assessment report, the Attorney-General of Ghana, the legal advisor to the Akufo-Addo government had issued a caution in a memo on similar lines, only calling short for government to drop the deal in its entirety. The deal in a clause, for instance, ties the hands of any future government and restrained to dismiss the Chief Executive Officer of Agyapa Royalties Ltd, even in the glaring face of administrative and management abberations, adversities and contraventions. Also, the deal does not make public the details of shareholders of the 49% stake in Agyapa Royalties Ltd.

Finally, nothing about Agyapa Royalties Ltd reflects constitutional imperatives of regional balance, considering the cultural and ethnic diversity of Ghana as a country. From the offer of consultancy services to the appointment of administrators of Agyapa Royalties Ltd, only functionaries serving the current government and only members of the Akyem tribe of the NPP stock are eligible for contracts, of which US$2mn disbursements have already gone to a legal firm owned by Gabby Otchere Darko, a nephew to Akufo-Addo.

Other names mentioned with links to Agyapa Royalties Ltd are Ken Ofori Attah, Minister of Finance and cousin to Akufo-Addo. The rest are Kofi Osafo Maafo, son of Yaw Osafo Maafo, Senior Minister of the Akufo-Addo; and Charles Adu Boahen, Deouty Minister of Finance and son of the late Prof Adu Boahen, the NPP presidential candidate for Elections 1992. All the above persons are ethnically Akyem by tribe.

By Comrade Shmuel Ja’Mba Abm