NDC Pays GH¢8.3m For Rotten Gallopers

Published in Daily Guide on June 29, 2012

By Charles Takyi-Boadu 

Details have started emerging about the payment of GH¢8.4million in the controversial 86 Hyundai Galloper cross-country vehicles imported into the country by the Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, which was supposedly left to rot by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
Contrary to claims by Deputy Information Minister Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa that government was negotiating with African Automobile Limited (AAL) for a settlement and to beat down the amount of $1.5billion being demanded by the company as the cost of the vehicles and accrued interest, it emerged that government had already paid a whopping sum of over GH¢8.4million to the company as judgment debt.
The vehicles, which had been left at the mercy of the weather on the compound of the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS), were ordered by the Rawlings administration and arrived in country in the year 2001. They were said to be intended for distribution to district assemblies.
Mr Okudzeto-Ablakwa however claimed that the refusal of the Kufuor administration to pay an amount of $17million as cost of the vehicles to Africa Automobile resulted in the vehicles being abandoned by the government, a claim which had been parried by former Chief of Staff, Kwadwo Okyere Mpiani.
Documents sited by DAILY GUIDE indicated that the monies were paid in three different tranches over a period of 10 months in the year 2010.
This was captured in the 2010 Auditor-General’s report on the public accounts of Ghana (Consolidated Fund) which is currently being scrutinized by the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament.
The first tranche of the money, GH¢2.5million, was paid by the NDC government to the company on May 14, 2010 and the next payment of GH¢2.5million effected two months later on July 16, 2010, whilst the last tranche of GH¢3.379million was paid on October 2, the same year.
DAILY GUIDE sources indicated that more money was paid to the company the Alfred Woyome way because there was no contract covering the supply of the vehicles.

Kwadwo Mpiani

The source said the yet-to-be-released Auditor General’s report for the year 2011 captured more of such payments to the company for the same purpose.
It therefore beat the imagination of many why Ablakwa would tell Ghanaians government was still negotiating with the company over the terms of payment when it had already commenced payments to the company that allegedly had no written contract with the state except for a gentleman’s agreement.
Another thing that surprised a number of people was the fact that it was captured as ‘judgment debt’ when the case was not in court, according to Ablakwa.
Mr. Mpiani challenged the rationale behind the $1.5billion claim by African Automobile Limited.
According to him, the vehicles, which were ordered by the previous NDC administration, did not meet the specifications and could therefore not be accepted by the Kufuor-led government.

No Contract
He was not sure whether there were documents covering the transaction between the previous NDC administration and the company involved.
Mr. Mpiani, who spoke on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show yesterday said, “Let them (referring to government) go to court and challenge them,” since according to him, “there is no basis for any negotiation.”
Instead of negotiating to ensure that the State did not lose an amount of money, he said the Mills administration was rather engaged in equalization of errors and a publicity stunt.
Former Local Government and Rural Development Minister under the erstwhile Kufuor government, Kwadwo Adjei-Darko, said the Government of Ghana, and for that matter his former ministry, never entered into any contract with African Automobile to import any vehicles into the country for onward distribution to the district assemblies.
Mr. Adjei Darko, who was a two-time minister at the Local Government and Rural Development Ministry between May 2003 and January 2005 and July 2007 and January 2009, said there was no document covering the so-called importation of the Galloper cross-country vehicles.
“So far as the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development was concerned, there was no transaction between the government and any company called African Automobile whether earlier or during that period since there is no document in the ministry to confirm such,” he disclosed.
He added: “If a group (NDC government) comes and they are always eager to pay all manner of debts, it’s their own cup of tea.”

Kwebena Adjei Explodes! NDC Capos Behind Mills Death Rumour

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

Published in Daily Guide on June 28, 2012

National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Kwabena Adjei has gone to town, accusing high-ranking members of his party of being behind the wild speculations that suggested President Atta Mills was dead.
Contrary to accusations from NDC spin doctors that the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) was behind the rumours, Dr Adjei said, “We are worried because this is coming from within our own ranks and from the highest echelons of our rank”, confirming claims by the pro-government tabloid The Informer that the rumours emanated from the Castle, the seat of government.
In a recorded conversation which was aired on a number of radio stations yesterday, the NDC Chairman was heard in a vexatious tone trying to douse speculations about the President’s health condition, saying, “There is nothing wrong with President Mills. President Mills is not ill. President Mills is doing what he can do to promote the ‘Better Ghana’ agenda, that’s it! And people want to rock the boat because they have their own agendas”.
He blasted those in the NDC with death-wishes for President Mills, who is set to lead them into the December 2012 general elections, saying, “The likes of me have sat down; we have not talked about anything, we have watched events and we are worried because this is coming from within our own ranks and from the highest echelons of our rank.”
This, he said, was because “there is nothing wrong with Professor Mills sitting down there; he’s healthy”, with a warning in tow: “We can’t continue to sit down and then see them rock the boat.”
However, he was short of mentioning names.
Until the NDC chief spilled the beans, the party propagandists had turned the heat on the opposition NPP, accusing it of spreading the rumour about Mills’ death.
But the NPP had refused to be drawn into the fray, saying that in the event of the president’s death, it was the vice president who would rather benefit since he would be elevated.
Sekou’s Clarion Call
In view of the conundrum around the president’s health, and other reasons, controversial son of Ghana’s first President, Dr. Sekou Nkrumah is pushing for the replacement of President Mills as presidential candidate of the NDC ahead of the December 2012 general elections.
He believed the President’s health would not able him to endure the strains of a vigorous electioneering campaign and stressed the urgent need for the NDC to wake up and “tell Mills to step aside for the Vice President”.
“I don’t know why the party is delaying in getting Mills to step aside for Mahama who is healthier and a good material because the more they delay, the worse it gets.
“We all hear Mills and Nana Addo speak so if the two of them stand for President in the country, why does the NDC think people will vote for President Mills?”, he wondered during a discussion on Asempa FM’s ‘Ekosii sen’ programme on Tuesday.
In his opinion, “Mills should have been allowed for one term due to his health conditions.”
But National Chairman of the NDC, Dr Kwabena Adjei insisted, “President Mills is not ill.”
That notwithstanding, Sekou, who was sacked as National Coordinator of the National Youth Council said, “I think it is not too late; the Vice President is there so they can marshal forces for the Vice President to lead the party into the elections rather than presenting sick Mills”.
Hassan Ayariga, People’s National Convention (PNC’s) presidential candidate, who was at the airport to welcome President Mills from a medical check-up trip, announced that nobody needed a rocket scientist to know that President Mills was sick.
He said the president was frail and it was obvious that he was not in good shape.
Word had spread from the Castle that the President was unwell after he allegedly failed to respond to in-house calls either willingly or unwillingly.
The Buzz At Castle
Reports said prior to flying the president out to the United States, the President was virtually out of touch, with his handlers raising fear and panic at the Castle.
The Chief of Staff, Henry Martey Newman, was alerted and he quickly arranged for the President to fly out of the country for what Prof Mills himself described as ‘a routine medical check-up’ in the United States.
The news buzzed with a lot of to and fro by his handlers and it leaked unto social media networks that he had passed on while he was still alive and kicking.
He returned to the country last Monday and at the Kotoka International Airport, where he was met on arrival by an overly enthusiastic crowd arranged by his party, embarked on a brief jogging exercise in a bid to prove his ability to go the full trot with the campaign.
But an obviously unhappy Sekou, who left the NDC to join the NPP campaign, had a word of advice for his colleagues in the ruling party: “The health of President Mills is no joke and must be taken serious.”
This, he said, was because “the president after returning from his check up said he is healthy but listening to the voice, you will notice that he is not only sick but very very sick.”
“Sekou Nkrumah will be the last person to wish President Mills ill. It is un-Ghanaian to wish ill on someone and I will not do it ever but I think with his current situation he must be forced to resign,” he insisted.
The former NYC boss said the President must resign to enable government to focus attention on improving the living conditions of the people.
“I think Ghanaians are focusing on things which are needless. We should be focusing on the welfare of people not the health of the president. We as a people must be fixing the economy of Ghana instead of fixing the health of the president. We should think about the health of Ghana and not the health of president Mills,” he noted.
He blamed the leadership of the NDC for making the health of president Mills worse by allowing him to lead the party into this year’s election because it would have been avoided by allowing the vice president to step in.
Mills @ NDC Headquarters
President Mills visited the party headquarters yesterday, the second since he became president, for a meeting with party executives on some pertinent issues affecting the party.
The President arrived at the headquarters at exactly 11am quietly, according to reports monitored on Peace Fm.
DAILY GUIDE sources at the meeting said reporters were barred from recording the voice of the president for obvious reasons.
The president has shaky voice since he returned from the United States and had a nasal tone- an indication that all is not well after all.

$20m NDC House For Lease

Published on June 25, 2012 | Daily Guide
By Charles Takyi-Boadu 

The controversial $20-million four-storey building intended to be used as the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is currently being offered for lease, apparently because of the controversy surrounding it.
The building, which was constructed by a Chinese company, prompted questions from individuals and groups following speculations that it was owned by the NDC, even as the ruling party struggled to distance itself from it.
Though it was not clear for how much the plush edifice- which is located at Adabraka, the commercial nerve center of the capital city, Accra- is being let out, a lease notice had been pasted on the facility, asking interested persons to either call a landline or mobile phone number supplied.
An Accra-based legal practitioner and brother-in-law of the Ahwois, Kwaku Bram-Larbi, who is also a member of the NDC and in-charge of the property, indeed confirmed to DAILY GUIDE that the facility was being offered for lease at a price of $32 per square meter per month.
Mr Bram-Larbi was a member of the Sub-Committee on Legal Affairs of the NDC Transitional team in 2009 when President Mills was elected.
The committee was chaired by Betty Mould-Idrissu, former Attorney General, who authorized the fraudulent GH¢51.2million payment to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the NDC financier.
Mr Bram-Larbi (BL) confirmed the price during an interview with DAILY GUIDE (DG) which is reproduced here.
DG: Good afternoon sir, I’m Charles Takyi-Boadu of the DAILY GUIDE newspaper. How are you doing?
BL: I’m alive
DG: Chief, we understand you are the lead lawyer in-charge of this building at Adabraka which is being offered for lease
BL: Yes, does the DAILY GUIDE want it?
DG: Well, we just have an interest in it. Chief, does that building really belong to the NDC?
BL: I don’t represent the NDC; my clients are not NDC. I thought this thing came up a long time ago. Those of you who cared did the searches…Papa. I don’t represent the NDC; the property does not belong to NDC. If you are interested, you can write a formal…notify us of your interest and then we can start talking.
DG: But chief who are the original owners of this building?
BL: Original owners? There are no original owners; the owners are my clients.
DG: Who are?
BL: Why is the DAILY GUIDE asking me these questions?
DG: We are just asking these questions in view of the controversy that it generated
BL: Which controversy? I’m not aware of any controversy…Mr Takyi, you see that when you people in the press decided to write about it, nobody said anything about it because me I knew that whoever was writing from what do you call it in London Times to whatever, they were just writing to please themselves. So nobody commented; I didn’t comment. My clients refused to comment. What I have done is what you have seen; it is there for lease. The process is that if you are interested, please send the letter, we will talk to you.
If it was for the NDC, do you think they would advertise it for leasing?
DG: I wouldn’t know but Mr. Bram-Larbi who are these your clients?
BL: I am not going to disclose to you until…if you are interested in the land, then I will tell my clients that … because I have three, four other people who have expressed interest in renting.
DG: So how much is it going for?
BL: Yes Mr. Takyi-Boadu, I have told you what I would ask you to do; what everybody who is interested is doing. If you put your interest formally on paper, then we talk to you but if you care to know it’s going for $32 per square meter.
DG: But I think, it would be good to clear any doubts hanging over the ownership of this building?
BL: There is no doubt. Well, if anybody or you think there is a doubt; go to the Lands (Commission)…You will find out. There is no doubt. It’s only one person and it’s duly registered.
DG: Who is?
BL: Please, I have answered that question with you. If you are interested, bring me an application, expressing your interest then we can talk but for me to be called by a newspaper to ask who the owner of the property is; I don’t think any good lawyer will do that.
DG: Okay Mr Bram-Larbi, I wouldn’t want to bother you that much; thank you very much sir and have a wonderful day.
BL: You’re welcome.
It was however believed that a whopping $20million was expended on the entire project as said by pro-democracy pressure group, Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG).
What baffled most individuals and groups, especially AFAG, which raised issues of impropriety about the building, was the fact that they could not fathom how a political party which only three years ago was on the verge of being thrown out of its Kokomlemle headquarters, due to unpaid rent arrears, could suddenly put up such a plush building in a choice area like Adabraka.
When the issue about the ownership of the building first came up for discussion, key and influential members of the NDC denied ownership until a confirmation by party General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who said they were scheduled to move in by the middle of this year.
With the backlash that the issue generated for the NDC, it suddenly chickened out, saying that it had nothing to do with the edifice.
But a source told DAILY GUIDE that in view of the furore the building generated when it came to light, the party intended to defer its use in order to deviate attention.
They were said to be considering the option of giving it out to Accra-based Radio Gold and TV3 which are both owned by kingpins of the ruling administration, in order not to generate further controversy over the building.
It was however not clear if Radio Gold would indeed move into the building, in view of the fact that the station is undergoing massive renovation by Chinese contractors.
TV3 is said to have been bought by some NDC gurus from the Malaysian owners in another bizarre transaction.

Don’t Dare Me – JJ Warns Mosquito

Published: Daily Guide on June 22, 2012

By Charles Takyi-BoaduFormer President Jerry John Rawlings yesterday reacted angrily to the tantrums of National Democratic Congress (NDC) General Secretary Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, who had called on supporters of the ruling party to defy the NDC founder.
Spokesman for Mr. Rawlings, Kofi Adams, who addressed a press conference in Accra on behalf of his boss, said, “We want to use this platform to warn them that henceforth, the office (of Mr Rawlings) is not going to keep quiet over such reckless comments coming from people who don’t think before they talk.
“If they say anything that affects his Excellency the former President, we will respond in like manner or more,” Mr Adams warned, asking the party’s General Secretary in particular to be careful with his comments.
The former president had just returned from a trip to Israel only to learn about the unprovoked attack from General Mosquito, who virtually dragged his former benefactor on the floor.
Mr Rawlings was around when his spokesperson was addressing the journalists.
Mr Adams stressed the need for the leadership of the NDC to call Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to order before they stripped him naked.
An obviously angry Kofi Adams said, “We’ve had the late Dr Caiquo, we’ve had Huudu Yahyaha as General Secretary before. The NPP has had Dan Botwe as a General Secretary in government and Nana Ohene-Ntow also as a General Secretary in government. We have not heard this kind of behaviour or this kind of utterances from them.”
The forum was to address what Kofi Adams, who had been suspended from his position as Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, described as “very important issues that have gone on in recent past” in the NDC and the country as a whole, and to “expose the falsities that have been peddled by some persons including leading members of government and party to denigrate the founder” of the NDC and his wife.
It was somehow a direct response to a statement over the weekend by the party General Secretary when he addressed NDC supporters at Wa in which he was captured on tape saying, “One of the ideals of what we were taught as part of June 4^th uprising is to engage in what we call positive defiance” and that as a means of implementing positive defiance, members of NDC should defy the founder and former President, Jerry John Rawlings and also Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.
Mr. Asiedu-Nketia said this was because Mr. Rawlings and his wife had allegedly sought to work against the interest of the NDC as a party, virtually campaigning for the opposition candidate.
Credibility Crisis
“I was wondering whether our General Secretary or Hon Johnson Asiedu-Nketia was indeed the General Secretary when he spoke on that platform because I was wondering where he got his information from; where President Rawlings has been to, to ask that people vote for the opposition candidate and the issues that President Rawlings has been raising whether those were the issues he was expecting the party’s members to defy,” an obviously disgruntled Mr. Adams posited.
He could therefore not fathom why Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, often referred to as General Mosquito, had in the last couple of days been hopping from one radio station to another to defend his use of the term ‘barking dog’ to describe Mr. Rawlings, claiming that he never used the word.
“Those who keep calling and wanting unity, coming around, engaging some of us and all of us are doing what it is that we can do, we cannot continue building when you have somebody at the centre of affairs destroying,” Kofi Adams warned.
He used the occasion to urge supporters, sympathizers and those who believed in the ideals of probity, accountability and social justice, as espoused by the Rawlingses, to “remain resolute”.

Anyidoho Fired!

Posted on June 7, 2012

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

 Samuel George Nettey, a member of the government’s communications team, has descended heavily on the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Koku Anyidoho, describing him as ‘hot-blooded’ and behaving like a ‘tin-god’.
He also accused Anyidoho of sending threatening text messages to persons in government and ‘praying that they don’t fall into ditches’.
“Koku Anyidoho expects government’s communication machinery to support him at the expense of the President? We don’t need hot-blooded people who just act on the spur of the moment without thinking and think  they are tin-gods who must be worshipped and that the President should be sacrificed for their personal interest; clearly not,” Sam George fired the President’s Director of Communications on Radio Gold yesterday.
Speaking on Radio Gold’s morning show where he described the President’s spokesman as a liability to the government and the Presidency, Sam virtually dragged the Castle strongman on the floor, asking him to go back and learn what it takes to be a communications director for the President.
Sam seemed to have been provoked by a publication in yesterday’s edition of the ‘The Informer’ newspaper owned by Koku, under the headline, ‘Sack this Aliu Mahama Boy Now’, which sought to present him as an NPP mole who had wriggled his way into the National Democratic Congress (NDC) fraternity.
He said, “We heard the rather unfortunate statements that were made by the Director of Communications which after checks turned out to be false; he had put the President in the line of fire. The President was being called a ‘knee-jerk reaction President’, a ‘President who takes decisions in the heat of the moment without thinking’, all thanks to his Communications Director.”
He called on the President and the entire government communication machinery to “reassess Koku Anyidoho’s position in government communications”, since in his opinion, “he has become a liability and not an asset”.
Apart from that, Sam George, who used to run errands for former Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama under the Kufuor administration, noted, “He just goes out and makes statements and makes the President look bad and when we sit on air and do damage control to protect our President, he decides to go around this and carry out this kind of cowardice oriented statements to try and smear you.”
Threats & Text Messages
“Well for me, the point is we must grow up, grow up and stop these attacks. He sent text to government officials attacking them simply because they had all chosen to speak for the President. I am not the only one he has sent text messages to; he has sent text messages to other government functionaries, threatening people and praying that they don’t fall into ditches. What does he mean by that?” Sam George asked rhetorically.
In spite of the fact that Koku Anyidoho had said on various platforms that it was some senior government official who instructed him to cause that infamous announcement of the supposed dismissal of the Ashanti ECG boss, Sam stated, “I have seen text messages from the said senior government official asking him to clarify his position again that he never gave him that instruction.”
That notwithstanding, he indicated, “Koku Anyidoho who sits today as the Director of Communications, I am reliably informed, was a member of the NPP too and Mrs. Rawlings, in one of her attacks on him, had asked him to return the NPP card, and that he had an NPP membership card.”
He further challenged the President’s spokesman to come out and tell how many party cards he holds.
Koku was said to be an NPP member when he was at the University of Ghana, Legon, in the 90s.
Notorious Okyeame
Sam George accused Mills’ communications director, who is always by the side of the President, as the author of   the infamous ‘Okyeame on the beat’ column in The Informer newspaper, which has one Andy Kankam as its Editor-In-Chief, since according to him, the supposed Okyeame which he claimed to be Koku “clearly doesn’t have a mind of his own”.
Sam’s woes with Koku and the paper began when he appeared on Radio Gold’s ‘Alhaji and Alhaji’ programme last Saturday and spoke on the issue about Koku’s gaffe regarding the supposed dismissal of the Ashanti regional boss of the Electricity Company of Ghana.
Though he claimed to have spoken the truth during the programme, Sam said, “and the next thing I get is a text message from Koku Anyidoho blasting me and calling me a school boy and asking me if I think I love the President better than him, and you can see that very line from his text message in the article and so why won’t I place this solely on his feet?”
Disgrace
“And if that is his problem with me, he can choose to go to whatever length he wants to paint me black in the media. All I would do is I would ask that everybody or the media should please play every interaction I have had with the media over the past two years that I have been a member of the government’s communication team and see anywhere and point out to me one place where I have called in to question the integrity of his Excellency the President and do same for Koku Anyidoho and see the litany of disgrace he has brought to the Castle and the presidency because of his ill thought and not thought-through statements he makes,” Sam charged.
For this reason, he said, “The caveat Koku Anyidoho is issuing through ‘The Informer’ to safeguard his job…. he should bear in mind, some of us are not interested in his job; we are not interested in it at all. We are interested in protecting our President and ensuring that six months, exactly six months and a day from today, we would be going to the ballots to ensure that such goofs of Koku Anyidoho do not affect the candidature of His Excellency and if Koku Anyidoho thinks that it is he who would send the President across the bridge, well, then he is living in a paradise of his own world.”
Anyidoho Must Go
Since Koku unilaterally arrogated to himself the power to sack public officials through radio announcements using the President’s name, a lot of people have called for his head for bringing embarrassment to the presidency by usurping the functions of the President.

On Joy FM News File on Saturday, panelists and listeners who sent text messages called for his immediate dismissal for bringing the office of the president into disrepute.