Advertisers Battle Government

...Over Nigerian Company
Posted: Daily Guide |Monday, 29 March 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu & Halifax Ansah Addo
MEMBERS OF the Advertising Association of Ghana (AAG) are up in arms with government over the controversial award of a 6-year multimillion dollar contract to a company owned and controlled by persons closely related to top government officials.

Reports are that no procurement process was followed before the award of the contract and already an amount of USD$ 1 million is believed to have exchanged hands.

DAILY GUIDE has gathered that this has generated bad blood between the Mayor of Accra; Alfred Vanderpuye, and the Greater Accra Regional Minister; Nii Armah Ashittey, and efforts are being made to keep the Castle out of the brawl and the amount involved.

The company, Via Affinity, has been contracted by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) as the only authority that has the right to manage, approve, allocate and control all outdoor adverts in Accra and share the profit equally with government.

Though on record the directors of Via Affinity are one Olusola Abiddum Osinibi; a Nigerian, Pamela Hunter; believed to be a sister of Tourism Minister Zita Okaikoi, and John Yankah; also believed to be a brother-in-law of Zita Okaikoi, it is strongly suspected the company is owned by a chain of highly placed government officials, but is being fronted by some private individuals.

The AMA has accordingly issued a directive to all advertising companies within the metropolis to apply and also pay for advertising rights only through Via Affinity before they can be issued permits to mount any of their billboards in town.

What has generated the uproar between the AAG and the AMA is the swift decision of Via Affinity to increase ‘Permit fees’ by a whopping 700% with effect from March 26, 2010. This decision was unilaterally taken without any consultation with the AAG.

Rather, advertising companies have been told their billboards will be dismantled if they fail to pay the new rates before the deadline.

Several of these advertising companies have told DAILY GUIDE they have already gone for bank loans and made very huge investments into their billboards, and it will take them between four to seven years to recoup the money.

Thus, there is no way they can pay the new fees being demanded by Via Affinity and still remain in business.

Interestingly, credible sources at the AMA disclosed to DAILY GUIDE that the contract was awarded by the Mayor, Alfred Vanderpuje, without the knowledge and approval of a technical committee made up of several institutions and stakeholders who are mandated to approve site permits for the mounting of billboards within the metropolis.

The source disclosed that the AMA had hitherto aptly and smoothly taken care of the approval of billboards, thus there was no need to contract a private company to take over and share the profit with government.

Investigations have revealed that even before Via Affinity was formally registered as a company in Ghana on August 27 2009, it had managed to send proposal to the AMA dated August 25, 2009 to supposedly ‘transform the regulation of signage and advertisement structures’ in the Accra metropolis.

Prior to being given the management contract, a presentation by the management of Via Affinity on how they are going to transform the regulation and signage of advertisement is said to have sparked a heated debate since from indications they are bringing nothing new to the table.

Industry players are therefore said to have raised several issues about Via Affinity’s ability to manage the job since it is only going to use a formula designed by the AAG to work.

A number of Assembly Members DAILY GUIDE spoke to say they remember signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Via Affinity to start talks on the matter, but they are surprised the AMA used the said MoU as the basis for a contract with the company.