And The Stealing Goes On And On...

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

It would be interesting to hear what Messrs. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Edward Omane-Boamah have to say about the sale of a government-owned guest house belonging to the State Housing Corporation (SHC) in Cape Coast to one of the latter's board members by the Managing-Director of the SHC, Dr. Mark Ankrah (See "MD of State Housing Corporation Ordered to Reverse Sale of Guest House" MyJoyOnline.com 4/2/14)

That the sales decision has since been reversed (as of this writing, 4/2/14) by the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Collins Dauda, does not mitigate the inexcusable hypocrisy of the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). And on the foregoing score must be recalled the fact that following a similar case involving the sale of a publicly owned real-estate property to Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, Messrs. Omane-Boamah and Okudzeto-Ablakwa went to court to attempt to stop the deal from going through, primarily because the transaction had occurred under the watch of the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

We must also add that the court action initiated by these two young men had been staunchly backed by the now-deceased President John Evans Atta-Mills, who may well have used Messrs. Omane-Boamah and Okudzeto-Ablakwa to further his own cynical political agenda of thoroughly impugning the integrity of the key operatives of the NPP. The irony of the entire episode, however, inhered in the fact that it was the "revolution-oriented" Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress that initiated this wantonly criminal process of quartering up state-owned property on virtual giveaway terms to NDC financiers and apparatchiks.

And, indeed, as the Supreme Court aptly opined then, while the sale of the publicly owned real-estate property to Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey might have been illegal in principle, nonetheless, it was the very National Democratic Congress plaintiffs who had set this egregious precedent, thus making a patent transactional legality out of the Obetsebi-Lamptey case.

Not content with the decision by the country's court of last resort, Messrs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Omane-Boamah, with the evidently staunch backing of President Atta-Mills, brazenly defied the court by adamantly refusing to handsoff the deal. It was only in the wake of the Atuguba-presided panel of nine Supreme Court jurists' returning of a morally staggering and ideologically charged Election 2012 presidential petition decision in favor of the NDC, that the now-substantive President John Dramani Mahama, in an apparent quid-pro-quo compact with the Atuguba-presided panel, decided to release Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey's legitimately acquired property to the National Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party.

As of this writing (4/2/14), the Ghanaian public had yet to be apprised of the value at which the government-owned guest house in Cape Coast had been sold to the unnamed board member of the SHC. Most likely, the property involved had been sold well below their present market value, as had been widely reported to have also been the case with the unconscionable quartering up and summary liquidation of the erstwhile Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC) by the Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress.

It is also not clear precisely under what legal circumstances Dr. Mark Ankrah had consented to selling off prime public property to a sitting board member of the State Housing Corporation. For there clearly appears to have existed a conflict of interest. At any rate, in his order reversing the sale of the guest-house, the sector minister, Alhaji Collins Dauda, is reported to have remarked that while, indeed, "the SHC is a limited liability company governed by the Companies Code," whatever the latter phraseology may imply, nevertheless, "the Government is a 100-percent shareholder" and has a bounden obligation to protect the public interest in the company's dealings.

Now, I take the foregoing observation to clearly imply that Dr. Ankrah's deal-making on behalf of the SHC had been other than fetchingly in the interest of the Ghanaian taxpayer. If so, then it may very well be in order to demand the immediate resignation of the MD of the SHC. This situation also warrants a thorough review of all property transactions executed under the watch of Dr. Ankrah on behalf of the SHC; and where deemed not to have served the interest of the Ghanaian taxpayer, promptly reversed.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 2, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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