Kofi Bentil, a Vice President of the policy think tank, IMANI Africa, appears to have taken a swipe at President John Dramani Mahama over his promise to terminate the revenue assurance contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Limited (SML).

In a post shared on X on May 15, 2025, Kofi Bentil, while reacting to a video of Mahama making the promise to terminate the contract, quoted a popular aphorism, attributed to French writer Jean-Baptiste, which implied that nothing will change.

“The more things change, the more they remain the same... Alphonse Karr,” he wrote on Facebook on Thursday.

In the said video, Mahama is shown in the run-up to the 2024 election vowing to terminate the contract, which he described as a ploy to steal from the country by the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.

"One would have thought that the corruption cases were enough, but it has numbed Ghanaians. Corruption does not shock Ghanaians the way it used to shock us… Even in the twilight, when you're about to exit office, you are still coming up with schemes to steal Ghanaian money.

"But I say that this will not happen. An NDC government under me will not recognise or accept this SML agreement. The President has hurriedly got KPMG to audit it; whatever audit they will do, I say we won't accept or respect any agreement with SML," he said.

He added, “And for the money that they have taken already, we would hold them accountable.”

The video was shared by investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni, who claimed that the contract still remains in force despite Mahama’s promises.

“The SML downstream contract is still running, even though when I confronted them with their claims, SML could not substantiate them. They resorted to deleting the services they claimed to be delivering from their websites and denying their own claims of savings made because of their so-called service.

“It’s been too long. Terminate the contract, retrieve the over $141 million paid to them, and prosecute those involved,” he wrote in a post shared on Facebook.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Revenue Authority has refuted reports that the SML contract is still in force.

In a May 14, 2025, press statement, sighted by GhanaWeb, the GRA said the reports published in some online portals and print outlets, including Business and Financial Times and Graphic Online, were inaccurate.

"The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has noted with concern reports... claiming that Strategic Mobilisation Ghana Ltd. (SML) has unveiled an expansion of its revenue assurance oversight to cover Ghana's upstream petroleum and solid minerals sectors.

"GRA wishes to clarify that the Authority's suspension of SML's services in the upstream petroleum and mineral sectors, pending further review issued in April 2024, remains in force," it emphasised.

It further added that the GRA has not instructed SML to activate or resume operations under the 2023 Consolidation of Revenue Assurance Services Contract.

View Kofi Bentil's post plus Mahama's video below:



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