COMMENT: Roland Agambire; A special kind

Roland Agambire- Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the AGAMS Group of Companies must be a special kind of person. The young man appears to be on a roll and taking on everybody and every institution in the country even if he is embroiled in controversies of gargantuan proportions.

Only last month, his Asongtaba Cottage Industry, came under severe media attack over some ‘phantom’ projects that are alleged to be draining the national treasury of millions of Ghana Cedis.

It was alleged that the Group has many contracts with government worth hundreds of millions of Ghana Cedis under the Savannah Accelerated Development Agency (SADA) and the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA).

The AGAMS Group of Companies is said to be running over fifteen (15) modules for youth employment ranging from guinea fowl rearing to dress making, phone and computer repairs and many more, but the allegation in the media is that most of these training programmes are not carried out or at best only half done. There are also allegations of over-invoicing and dishonorable claims against the company.

The Auditor General’s reports (2010-2011) which are currently in Parliament have also captured some of these expenditures and indeed it was from Parliament that the nation first heard of the Guinea Fowl Project even though it was Joy FM- an Accra based radio station that brought out the details and actually gave the story huge mileage.

When these matters came up, almost every radio station in the city did a program or two on Guinea fowls and/or the tree planting projects. Weekend Radio discussion panelists had a field day. The newspapers, particularly, the private ones were not left out. They wrote volumes on the issues and chastised the AGAMS Group for ‘short changing’ the public and the government.

Interestingly,everything changed just after a week or two. The stories on Asongtaba that were posted on the websites vanished; the voices that spoke against the projects died down. And as you read this write-up no one speaks or writes about Asongtaba and the Guinea Fowl project anymore. Even those who speak about RLG only try to justify the projects.

Then we are told that RLG has a big sponsorship deal with Gina Blay’s Private Newspapers Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) in which RLG will sponsor all kinds of training programs for journalists as well as pay for some official trips abroad by members of the Association.

As if that was not enough, a fortnight ago, during a radio discussion, a top media personality displayed a document about a sponsorship request by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament to RLG. The display was to show that even Parliament itself makes requests of the company for sponsorship and that it is, therefore, no crime for the company to make offers to Parliament.

During the funeral rites of the late President Mills, Roland Agambire made a cash donation of GHc500,000. 00 (Five billion old cedis) even though this was a state funeral. He also donated cash and equipment towards the 2012 general elections as well as another GHc2 million donation for the ECOWAS games held in Accra last year. As for show biz events, he is the King there. Even Chris Brown knows about that.

But the Scandal also has its own little confession to make; The Centre for Freedom and Accuracy- the publishers of the SCANDAL has also ever made some request for equipment from RLG even though it did not receive any. So then it looks like most of us voluntarily walked into the web of the AGAMS Group and should not now complain.

Considering the enormity of the allegations against the AGAMS Group, any other CEO in this position would have been sulking and running for cover but not Roland Agambire. He has actually decided this time round to ‘enter’ Ghana’s Parliament with the power of money. He is proposing to drill boreholes in all the Two Hundred and Seventy-Five (275) constituencies of the country for the lawmakers. He wrote officially through the Clerk of Parliament to all Members of Parliament on this matter. He even attached forms for interested MPs to fill out. This is called AUDACITY.

Two Hundred and Seventy Five boreholes at an average cost of GHc10, 000 will cost Agambire and his RLG GHc2.75 million. (A borehole in Bunkprugu could cost even more, considering the travelling distance). In some other jurisdictions, revenue authorities would have been up and doing trying to find out how much profit the company made and how much tax they paid, but this will not happen in Ghana.

One would have thought that the last group of people Agambire will like to meet is Parliamentarians because these are the people responsible for issues of public accountability. Indeed the Auditor General’s report is before them. They have a whole Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that reviews the Auditor-General’s reports and makes recommendations as to what actions should be taken to recover lost monies and penalize people who are found culpable.

But clearly, Agambire does not fear Sheeee….rrrr. Could it be because he really has not done anything wrong, or that he has weighed everybody and believes in his ability to take us all on? For now, it appears we all are like hot butter, and like a knife, AGAMS is running through. Whether he is right or wrong who can stop him?