Member of Parliament for South Dayi Constituency, Rockson-Nelson Etse Kwami Dafeamekpor has described as shocking, President Akufo-Addo’s recall of the Agya deal to Parliament.
Mr. Dafeamekpor says certain aspects of the deal cannot be changed even if Parliament relook at it.
“We are incapable of remedying aspects of the deal for instance concerning nepotism and cronyism,” he told Ghanas Online in an interview.
The Minority, according to him feel vindicated, considering the findings of the report which led to their walkout from Parliament in protest when such anomalies were hinted during the debate on the deal.
President Akufo-Addo has tasked Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to recall the deal to Parliament after the OSP’s Corruption Assessment Risk pointed out many ills in the agreement.
Martin Amidu described the process surrounding the entire deal as fraudulently immersed in corruption, cronyism and nepotism.
Corruption Assessment Risk of the deal
The description, used by Martin Amidu, according Dafeamekpor, clearly depicts the enormity of the rot entangling the entire process.
“After we participated in the debate to register our protestations so that the pendulum would swing from the majority to the minority for mediamen to appreciate the various arguments underpining our positions on the matter, we walked out — we know that a day will come this thing will bring disgrace to Parliament so we would not participate. When we walked out, that was when CSOs paid attention to the deal so they then decided to look into it critically, issued a very long statement on the matter, and yet the Finance Minister [on] Graphic frong page said he has listened to the CSOs but he’ll go ahead, nevertheless,” he explained.
The Lawyer added, that, had the majority listened to the red alerts the minority raised, there is no way the disgrace would have emerged.
“So reading Martin Amidu’s report, all the things that he highlighted were things that the Minority essentially raised, based on which we refused to participate to vote for the deal. So we feel very vindicated for the matter. And if you see the language employed by Martin Amidu; greed, grandstanding, bid-rigging, they are very strong language,” he stressed.
Mr. Dafeamekpor in furtherance of his comments queried if the Special Prosecutor is playing politics with the deal as the Majority accused the Minority of.
He therefore described the agreement as a “very bad rotten one from the begining, which remains as such.”
Read also: Amidu detects corruption, bid-rigging in Agyapa deal
Also, he said the procedure going to be adopted to clean up the mess surrounding the deal is unclear which he has questioned.
“..will the Finance Minister not remain the Finance Minister, will the Africa Legal Service not remain part of the transactional advisors for the deal,” he asked.
Agyapa in Parliament
Some of the queries, the Legislator said the Minority made about the deal in Parliament included the following;
- “We raised the issue of how the transactional advisors were selected [at the Committee level] but no information was provided.”
- “Also, we asked for the Directors that Agyapa has registered in Jersey, details were skeptic, no documents were provided.”
- “We further asked for the valuation report that valued Agyapa as existing on paper to be valued as a $1 million entity, no such valuation was provided.”
- “We also wanted to know the cash flow projections for a company that has been registered and exist only on paper. Because for any investor to be able to invest in a company, you must provide cash flow.”
- “Finally we asked that if Parliament was being asked at the time to approve of a deal predicated on an amendment carried in the existing parent Act of the Mineral Income Investment Fund, we wanted to know if the President has assented to it but they never provided,” he elaborated.
Notwithstanding the tussle about the deal, both from the Minority and CSOs, Mr. Dafeamekpor said the Majority stampeded everyone and approved the it.
These, he said, are the reasons the NDC government will utterly abrogate the contract if they win the December polls.