IMANI Africa’s President, Franklin Cudjoe has described the defence put up by the National Lottery Authority (NLA) on a documentary by JoyNews/FM and the Multimedia Group Limited (MGL) as frivolous.
Mr. Cudjoe says the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and the Special Prosecutor (SP) cited by the Authority in their defence shows they are not serious.
This, he says, is due to issues surrounding all sole sourced contracts since 2017, following Manasseh Azuri’s ‘Contract for Sale’ documentary which led to the sacking of the PPA Boss, and the SP, Martin Amidu resigning from his position recently due to operational challenges.
“I have read the NLA’s response to Joy News’ documentary of its wild game of chance purchases with our taxes. I wonder why any serious institution will be mentioning the PPA and the Special Prosecutor in their defence.
Read also: Amidu’s resignation: I’m not surprised it happened – Franklin Cudjoe
First, we just realised that almost every sole-sourced deal procured from 2017 has serious defects, reference ‘PPA’s contract for sale’ — [which makes] the NLA’s seeming crooked anaconda-like procurement of POS terminals a perfect candidate,” a facebook post by Mr. Cudjoe, sighted by Ghanas Online indicated.
A JoyNews investigation aired Wednesday November, 18, 2020, uncovered the loss of over $10 million in the procurement of Point of Sale (POS) devices for the National Lottery Authority (NLA).
In the documentary, an evidence was gathered that the contract for the supply of 30,000 POS devices for the NLA should have cost less than half of the contract sum of $25 million.
Meanwhile, a statement released by the NLA’s Public Relations Unit described the whole investigations as ” baseless without any iota of truth” which is also “propaganda and mischief” intended.
It states the Authority expected MGL to present their evidence to the Court since the investigation in question is already undergoing legal redress.
“If not for purposes of propaganda and mischief, Joy News/Joy FM/Multimedia Group Limited has every right under the law to submit their evidence to the Court for final determination of the case but no, they chose to throw dust into the eyes of Ghanaians and the general public,” the statement said.
The statement further indicate “the Android Point of Sale Terminals have special technological features aimed at supporting NLA to offer VALUE ADDED SERVICES unlike the usual Analogue POSTs Machines which lack the capacity to perform the functions of Value Added Services.
“Therefore, it is very naive and ignorant for Joy News/Joy FM/Multimedia Group Limited to conclude that the Authority has procured 30,000 Android Point of Sale Terminals at an inflated cost of over $10 million dollars.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Cudjoe says “they [NLA] are lucky he [Special Prosecutor] has abandoned his post, he would have arranged for the promoters of this unjustified jackpot doing time through community hard labour, like sweeping the High Streets and cleaning every lottery kiosk in Accra,”