The Popular United States of America-based Ghanaian lawyer, Professor Kwaku Asare, known in social media circles as Kwaku Azar, has asked ten questions he considers as critical to the latest investigative piece by Manasseh Azure Awuni, “Contracts for Sale”.
Mr Kwaku Azar who has passed judgment on Ghana’s corruption fight, saying “we [Ghana] are at a dysfunctional corruption equilibrium” has asked that also proposed a “disruption of the equilibrium if we are to make progress in this polity”.
Read his full post below:
Kwaku Azar Writes: Donkomi reveals how contracts procured by TDL are sold to others for execution (or possibly further resale). It is a big deal because it shows, on its face, that TDL fraudulently procures these contracts from PPA, an agency that ironically was created to curb procurement fraud and corruption.
As big as Donkomi is, I think it raises even bigger questions:
- Are there other TDLs in the procurement space?
- How many contracts did TDL win?
- How did TDL, a company incorporated in 2017, win these contracts?
- How many of these contracts were sold?
- Who are the buyers of these contracts?
- What role, if any did the awarding entities (MDA) play in facilitating the fraud? As an example, how did they not realize that the contract is not being performed by the bid winner?
- What role did the PPA Board play in enabling these contracts?
- If Manasseh Azure Awuni can get wind of and investigate these corrupt practices, how do they remain invincible to EOCO, BNI and other anti-corruption agencies?
- Why have no arrests been made by EOCO, BNI and other investigative agencies even after their work has been done for them and videos are circulating everywhere?
- What role, if any, do the Procurement Minister and the Monitoring Minister play in evaluating restrictive tenders?
While congratulating Manasseh for a job well done, it must be emphasized that nothing short of an independent forensic audit can answer these questions.
In the meantime, I must repeat that we are at a dysfunctional corruption equilibrium that must be disrupted if we are to make progress in this polity.
To sum up, Donkomi, like bikini, reveals some very interesting stuff. But we must dig deeper to get to the real stuff.
Da Yie!