Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Friday, 24 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The dismissal of the Acting Director of the Information Services Department (ISD), Nee Agiri Barnor, has sparked controversy at the Ministry of Information, with the late Dan Lartey’s Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) calling for a refund of the over GH¢169,000.00 (¢1.69billion) which has not been accounted for by the Ministry.
Nee Agiri Barnor was relieved of his appointment through a letter signed by the Secretary to the President, Bebaako Mensah, directing Information Minister John Tia to look for a new person to take over from him.
His budget for a whole year to disseminate government information was ¢450 million as against ¢1.69billion given to Stan Dogbe to buy hampers for some editors and reporters.
Though no specific reason was assigned for his sudden dismissal, it is believed that Mr. Barnor was sacked following DAILY GUIDE’s publication on the over GH¢169,000.00 (¢1.69billion) hampers’ scandal involving Presidential Aide Stanlislav Xoese Dogbe, with some pointing accusing fingers at Mr. Barnor as being the architect of the story.
This, sources said, was part of reasons why the ‘group of five’ deputy directors deliberately petitioned the President to cause the ISD boss’s removal, accusing him of displaying arrogance, incompetence and selectively vindictive style of administration.
Unfolding events at the Ministry and the ISD have made close associates of the dismissed ISD boss who worked under him at the department and the Ministry become nervous since they are also seen as ‘saboteurs’.
Prior to his dismissal, there was a frosty relationship between him and his superiors, including the Minister, his two deputies and Stan Dogbe, the Presidential Aide since he was not included in any decision-making process. John Tia had denied that Nee Agiri Barnor was not a team player, promising to work with everybody at the ministry.
However, a week after John Tia’s assurance, the ISD boss has been shown the exit, leaving Stan Dogbe, the man who squanderedthe taxpayer’s money on trivialities, to work at the corridors of power with his shoulders high.
This was because Mr. Barnor was said to be showing gross disrespect to his superiors, especially the two deputies, James Agyenim Boateng and Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, who, it was rumoured, Mr. Barnor referred to as ‘small boys’ since he could not fathom why an elderly person like him was made a director whilst these two young men would be made deputy Ministers.
He was otherwise considered to be an outsider since he was said to have left the NDC to join Goosie Tanoh’s comatose National Reform Party which was formed out of the NDC.
Obviously aware of the accusing fingers that would be pointed at him as the only ‘black sheep’ among the lot, Mr. Barnor was said to have assembled his staff immediately DAILY GUIDE broke the story about the hampers, to dispel the probability of it being linked to him as the architect.
Despite the several spins and the obvious denial that have been put on the story by John Tia to cover-up for Stan Dogbe, (the man who signed and acknowledged receipt of the 1.69billion cedi cash in a ‘Ghana Must Go’ bag) and the Ministry, he has not been able to produce any documentary evidence to show how the ¢1.6billion cash was supposedly used for its ‘intended purpose’- the educational campaign on the 2010 budget.
But Stan himself admitted the money was expended on its intended purposes on hampers, workshops and payments to journalists and sympathizers of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) who wrote articles in favour of the budget statement, as well as radio hosts.
Mr. Barnor has since responded to issues leading to his dismissal, indicating that he was consistently sabotaged in the department by those he described as elements who saw him as a nuisance.
In a statement he issued yesterday, the former ISD boss said he was suspected to have stepped on the toes of some people who were bent on removing him from office in the performance of his duties since “efforts at communicating government policies were consistently and systematically sabotaged.”
This, he said, was evidenced by the fact that the ISD as a department was given only GH¢45,000 (¢450 million) to carry out public education on government policies nationwide throughout the eleven months he served in office.
It is therefore not clear why over ¢1.69billion was given to Stan Dogbe to be spent on hampers and other fleeting purposes while the ISD, the implementing agency for government communication, received virtually nothing relative to what Stan wasted.
Mr. Barnor therefore could not fathom why when communications to the public on government policies failed, the scapegoat became the ISD. He described the petition submitted by five officers of the ISD to the Minister of Information as part of a larger vicious conspiracy against him.
Nee Agiri Barnor denied ever having any dealings with DAILY GUIDE or any other media house to thwart the work of the department and chided his detractors for using the Enquirer newspaper as a platform to discredit him.
For the over 30 years that he has been in politics and public service in Ghana, he swore, he had never caused any publication in DAILY GUIDE.
He believes the time and energy spent on sabotage and scheming in this matter against him could have been better applied to fixing the dismal state of government communications.
The GCPP cannot also comprehend why in the face of the several challenges confronting the nation including discontent on the labour front and lack of logistics for the security agencies, the government is unable to properly account for the over GH¢169,000.
A statement issued by the party and signed by its General Secretary, Ali Adam, said “the official explanation that the money was spent on the communication of the 2010 Budget Statement by journalists mostly through the Institute for Financial & Economic Journalists (IFEJ) has proven to be false” since IFEJ has come out officially to deny ever receiving even a pesewa from the ministry.
The GCPP identified with the general anger of Ghanaians about this reckless expenditure, noting “this government is becoming too eager to spend the nation’s resources on the wrong things while our development effort is starved of the needed resources.”
The party noted that the money could have been used to procure bullet-proof for policemen on patrol duty which could have saved the recent killing of a policeman in Kumasi in the line of duty.
It has thus called on the Mills administration to cause the refund of the ¢1.69billion to the Consolidated Fund without delay since “the GCPP will never allow this matter to be swept under the carpet unless this money has been restored to the public purse.”