Agyapa deal shrouded in ‘darkness’; Akufo-Addo must take full responsibility – Minority

President Nana Akufo-Addo must take full responsibility for the breaches and infractions of the Agyapa deal, Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu has said.

The president ordered Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to take the deal back to parliament for a review following a corruption risk assessment done by Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu, in which he observed that the transaction advisors of the deal are prone to nepotism, cronyism and favouritism.

Mr Amidu also noted that the deal did not pass the transparency, probity and accountability test.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, 3 November 2020 within the precincts of parliament, Mr Iddrisu said: “Regrettably, with the referral from the executive and the president, parliament cannot remedy the defects as captured in the conclusions of the Special Prosecutor”.

“How is parliament going to remedy breaches to the Public Financial Management Act? How is parliament going to remedy breaches to the Public Procurement Act and its accompanying amendments? How is parliament going to remedy payments made to IMRA, which has a decoy company of Databank, how is parliament going to remedy that?

“So, I do not see the NDC Minority ever supporting anything Agyapa. I want to be convinced that it’s worthy building a national consensus on and that will be premised on three important issues”, Mr Iddrisu said.

He wondered: “Why are you monetising when you can leave the same royalties and benefit from it annually with $130 million noting that it makes a significant contribution of four per cent to your national revenue and just a contribution of 10 mining companies?”

“Now, traditional authorities and traditional communities will lose out because they benefit from the Minerals Development Fund.

“What assurance are we giving those traditional communities?” he asked.

“Then, more importantly, risk of corruption; the whole transaction is in darkness, who gets punished for it? This is a litmus test for Nana Addo Dankwa on his avowed commitment to fighting corruption.

“He must do more than a referral to parliament. He must take full responsibility for it and not hide behind parliament. All those actions of breaches, all those actions of failures, all those actions which are not in the public interest were executive decisions of the president”, he indicated.

The Tamale South MP also praised Mr Amidu for the work he did on the deal.

“I should commend the Special Prosecutor for doing a diligent work on the corruption risk analysis of this particular transaction”.