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Had enough of Woyomegate?
E. Ablorh-Odjidja
We are here referring to
the NDC administration of Ghana and the Wayome imbroglio.
There is much at stake on this issue. Whether or not
President Atta Mills administration is really implicated in
the case is the main issue. It needs to be resolved;
the sooner the better for all.
The political
consequences of Woyomegate are predictable. It has already
been negative for the Mills led government. The likelihood
of a violent December 2012 election can, therefore, be
assumed as this administration will do everything to
maintain power; certainly to prevent the
unpalatable from happening should there be a regime
change by 2013.
Surprisingly. Woyomegate
happened under NDC, an offshoot of the PNDC that rose to
power through a coup in 1981, with the self-righteous
corruption free society ideal as the objective. Driven by
overzealous sense for probity, the PNDC toppled a
constitutionally elected government, killed, maimed and
jailed fellow citizens for lesser crimes than Woyomegate.
It was later to transform itself to a constitution
respecting party, the NDC, by 1992.
The party has since been
brought to power through the ballot twice, one under
Rawlings, the architect of the 1981 coup and the other under
Atta Mills, the current president.
Under President Mills
administration, the NDC mantle for probity and
accountability is slowly becoming a joke. Immediately
after his inauguration, NDC cohorts went after members of
the previous NPP administration looking for alleged corrupt
officials. They embarked on seizure of cars, setting
commissions of inquiry on Ghana@50 affairs and engaged in many other
aggressive supposedly corruption bursting exercises.
They found none.
Instead, by coincidence and in one of the most dramatic
ironies in history, the nation found Mr. Alfred Wayome, the
NDC financier, caught in the biggest most corroding
corruption case ever!
National perception
wise, the Mills NDC administration has since been tied to Mr. Wayome
like a dog on his master’s leash. Even a prominent NDC
member and a former Attorney
General Aminu declared openly that case was one of
fraud. He was promptly sacked by President Mills for
his candid opinion..
To make matters worse,
the Mills administration, instead of vigorously prosecuting
Woyome, had embarked on apparently
protracted handling of the case. This has led some to
suggest that some top officers in the administration are
part of the cabal that planned the Woyome heist and therefore are
now intent on slow walking the case to death.
In the mean time, there
is also the wish on the part of NDC sympathizers that other
events may happen to help divert attention from Woyomegate.
One such event is the recent ranking of Ghana as the
seventh best governed country in Africa by the Mo Ibrahim
Foundation. But others are skeptical about the honor.
They wonder how years of controversy surrounding this
massive corruption case could earn Ghana this ranking and
question also who our friends
in good governance really are.
Its easy to observe that Woyomegate is the
biggest corruption case in our history of granting contracts
even though there were bigger project undertakings in the
past than the simple refurbishing of stadia, as is the case
with Wayome.
“The cost to build Akosombo in 1964 was
estimated at $258 million
….. Its development was undertaken by the
Ghanaian government and funded 25% by the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development of
the
World Bank, the
United States, and the
United Kingdom.”
Put in perspective, the $50 mil default
judgment payment to Woyome is almost as big as the money
borrowed from outside to complete the Dam. And Woyome
is not the only recipient of the default judgment payment
windfall. There is the one for Construction Pioneers (CP)
which is even bigger. (Another
giant corrupution case waiting to errupt).
There is more. The
virtual or accrual cost to come is the penalty for being so
dishonest in exposing promptly the fraud and the cover-up
attempts that followed along the way. This cost is hidden
and it has a bite that is worse on our economy than the $50
mil in Wayome’s pocket.
Yet no one I have
recently spoken to about this case speaks about this accrual
cost. Many are stuck on the impact of the actual check
amount paid to Woyome. The notion that loss of
international trust in our institutions could cost us more
in the future is lost on many.
The judiciary, the
Attorney General’s office, the Ministry of Finance and the
Bank of Ghana, our central bank, after Woyomegate, must have
a deficit in trust at the international market place where
we borrow money.
First, how could a judge
grant default judgment to a man who had no legal standing
(no contract with the government) in a case he fraudulently
brought to court? Yet he got a default judgment because a
non-existing contract was breached!
Second, how could the
Attorney General’s office, the legal arm of the government
that has the obligation to protect the state, fail to mount
vigorous prosecutorial or defense motions against such a
transparently fraudulent case? Yet, the AG’s office was
first to throw in
the towel. It has since not shown any real enthusiasm in
pursuing this case to its logical conclusion. (Note that the
last time at court, the AG’s lawyers were so ill prepared
that the judge threatened to throw out the case.)
Third the Finance
Ministry and the Bank of Ghana, the exchequer and official
bank of the nation, acted like ordinary commercial entities.
After an initial feeble protest, an order was offered by the
ministry for hasty payment, short of the vigorous protest
that would have been required of them as part of their fiduciary duty!
More perplexing is the
question whether the Bank of Ghana and the Ministry of
Finance were not part of the signatory process of such big
contracts. Were they ever aware of Woyome’s name on any
contract they signed?
The most damaging
impression yet is on the image of Mills as president, the
first from our most prestigious university, the University
of Ghana, Legon, to reach this august office.
The world would look on
and conclude that not only are key Ghanaian institutions
weak but the same are also corrupt. The unforgiving
financial markets will take this into account and the result
will show in relatively higher rate on loans we contract.
The exact total of finance charges we eventually pay on
loans in the future is hard to tell now but you can bet it
will be hundreds more than the total of the default judgment
paid to Woyome and Construction Pioneers.
The ultimate and crucial
cost from the Woyome corruption case, however, will be paid
in December 2012 when Ghana goes to the polls. The current
administration will do all it can to douse the chances of a
change of regime so as to prevent unsavory consequences from
Wayomegate from happening. Election 2012 is going to be
violent.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja,Publsiher
www.ghanadot.com,
Washington, DC, May 24, 2012
Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or
reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website,
email a copy of the web page to
publisher@ghanadot.com
. Or don't publish at all.
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