Grave looters strike Baah-Wiredu

Disturbing news is emerging from the family of the late Finance Minister, Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu as poverty has forced them to go cup-in-hand to raise money to pay his children’s school fees, DAILY GUIDE can confirm.

The condition of his family is such that when grave looters recently destroyed his grave, they were unable to raise the necessary funds to repair the desecrated grave, sources close to the family have told this paper.

“When I came, there were so many things that had gone asunder; somebody has gone to break the tomb and I asked what the person took because nowadays we don’t bury people with gold and other things so what I was expecting is that maybe they took the bone,” Sam Obeng Tuudah, an uncle of the late Baah-Wiredu who resides in London, exclusively told DAILY GUIDE.

Apparently, some of the alleged grave looters have been arrested.

“We have started moving in, we started by putting a watchman there [by the grave] to guard against all those things, so we are taking care of it,” Mr. Obeng Tuudah told DAILY GUIDE.

Mr. Tuudah attributed the deplorable condition of the Baah-Wiredu family to mismanagement, “The little that he left behind, we shared it among the ladies but some of them, maybe, mismanaged it.”

“There is only one woman who has come to me that she is finding difficulties in raising the children. We will take care of that,” he said.

The situation came to light at the March 5, 2014 inaugural lectures in memory of the late Finance Minister who allegedly died of prostate cancer in South Africa in 2008.

At the inaugural lecture, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, the head of the Financial Accountability and Transparency Trust, organizers of the lectures, pleaded with patrons to drop cash in designated boxes to help salvage the financial situation of the Baah-Wiredu family.

Dr. Wereko-Brobby could not believe that a man who was handling Ghana’s entire coffers would die a pauper; “Here is a man; the Finance Minister…how can you say his son can’t pay school fees? Isn’t it pathetic? Special assistants make money when they are in power and the Finance Minister, the man who holds the public purse, his children can’t pay school fees?”

Dr. Wereko-Brobby told DAILY GUIDE that during the organization of the inaugural lectures, Baah-Wiredu’s family assumed it was a fundraising programme for them so they stormed the organizers with a plethora of requests.

“The family came to us, they thought we were doing some big fundraising event so they said his children’s school fees, his grave has been desecrated. I am more concerned about his children’s school fees. I am sure his special assistant makes some money, and strangely, Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, known as one of the most incorruptible Ministers during the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, died in office at 56 years.

He became finance minister in 2005.

He earned praise for his steady guidance of the Ghanaian economy through a period of economic growth fuelled by high prices for gold and cocoa exports despite debilitating economic conditions and a surge in inflation during his tenure.