The Ashanti Regional Chairman, Mr. Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, is calling on former President John Mahama to account to Ghanaians about scandals that rocked his government if he has now found a voice to speak.
Mr. Antwi-Boasiako aka Chairman Wontumi believes Ghana is at a crossroads because the erstwhile government headed by Mr. Mahama couldn’t account for funds that were “greedily pumped into projects such as GYEEDA, SADA, Hope City” and others.
In an interview with Wontumionline.com, the NPP Chairman explained that for Mr. Mahama to “have the balls” to shove lies on President Akufo-Addo’s government by falsely claiming that it is blaming every fall on COVID-19, is very “disgusting to think about”.
Speaking at an event organised by the opposition National Democratic Congress dubbed ‘Ghana at a crossroads’, Mr. Mahama claimed that “Being a pandemic, COVID-19 affected almost every country on earth including our West African neighbours with who we share similar economic characteristics.”
“Yet, these neighboring countries such as Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin, Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, have emerged from this pandemic comparatively unscathed and with relatively stronger fundamentals as compared to ours.”
But Chairman Wontumi called Mr. Mahama out for telling lies- noting that he wants insulate himself from the “bad scandals that rocked his government”.
“Can he now tell us the full story about GYEEDA, SADA and Hope City project?” he asked.
Some scandals under John Mahama govt
GYEEDA Scandal
The GYEEDA scandal, uncovered by Joy FM’s Manasseh Azure Awuni, whose investigation led to policy change in the running of the agency. The reporter found millions of cedis were paid illegally to contractors of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency (GYEEDA).
When President Mahama was made aware of the corruption he instructed the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to retrieve the money illegally paid to individuals and companies through contracts with GYEEDA, the Savanna Accelerated Development Agency (SADA) and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).
He had also asked the Minister for Youth and Sports to suspend, with immediate effect, all payments under all GYEEDA contracts, except the payment of arrears to workers up to the end of the year.
The government set up a five-member committee to probe the allegations further. The committee’s report largely corroborated Manasseh’s findings and made various recommendations to government. As part of the reforms, parliament passed a law to regulate the operations of GYEEDA, which was later renamed Youth Employment Agency (YEA).
SADA Scandal
The same reporter who found mass corruption in GYEEDA also looked into Ghana’s Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) – finding it had misappropriated millions of dollars allocated to it.
The investigations showed that SADA paid GH₵32,498,000 to ACICL to plant five million trees in the savannah zone, but could only account for about 700,000 trees.
It also found that SADA spent GH¢15 million on guinea fowls, but could only account for a few of the birds.