…Over ‘Woyomegate’ & Other Acts Of Corruption

By Adu Koranteng

Members of the minority parties in parliament have been told to move a motion to summon the President, John Atta Mills, before the Public Accounts Committee to answer charges of corruption in the case of Alfred Woyome and other related issues.

Speaking to The New Crusading GUIDE in an exclusive interview, Andrew Kofi Gyan, President of the Tertiary Education Students Confederacy (TESCON), said current events had proven that the president knew a lot about the payment of the US$58 million judgment debt to Alfred Agbesi Woyome - the so-called financial engineer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He told the minority in parliament to challenge the clause in the Constitution that grants immunity to the president from prosecution and called for its amendment.

According to Mr Gyan, the interim report of the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) had shown that the president had knowledge about the judgment debt before it was paid to Alfred Woyome. “His involvement in this discreet ploy with Betty Mould-Iddrisu and Kwabena Duffuor, has caused a gargantuan financial loss to the state, and all of them must be penalized on the same platform.

Besides, he said the president should be made to give account of the US$3 million his government released for Haiti after the earthquake struck in 2010. He urged the Public Accounts Committee to demand detailed report on the 3 million dollars the government spent for the centenary celebration of Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the other US $3 million dollars released to purchase the seismic machine for the Geological Survey Department in 2010. “Since it is his government that is in office, he should take responsibility for all the GHc650 million paid as judgment debt between 2009 till date,” Mr Gyan demanded.

He said, “Candidate Mills in 2008 promised a better Ghana that would focus on investing in people, jobs and the economy. He promised amongst many others, to ‘work with business associations to support informal and formal private businesses, give special attention to micro, small and medium sized business financing, create jobs, both directly and indirectly, especially for the youth, achieve agreements with ECOWAS countries to provide aid in exchange for export markets for Ghanaian made goods, amend the Public Procurement Act to favor Ghana’s goods in all public procurements, work with financial institutions to encourage lending to business operations, introduce special tax rates to financial institutions that lend to priority sectors, agriculture, industry, services and micro-, small and medium sized businesses and pensions, expand Nursing Training Colleges, complete the School of Health Sciences at UDS and University of Cape Coast…’”

He recounted that Mills promised to strengthen the CHRAJ to fight corruption, even without an explicit complainant, to abolish the Office of Accountability that Ghanaians believe protects corrupt officials, to revise the law on Asset Declaration to increase transparency and accountability, to enact a Freedom of Information Bill so the public has access to official information, to support the role of the Media in promoting national unity, stability and security.

“Candidate Mills and his NDC made fuel pricing a key campaign issue in the run-up to the 2008 General Elections, promising to further drastically reduce fuel prices when elected President. As President, Mills has increased fuel prices to an unprecedented all-time high of 8 Ghana Cedis,” adding that he must be made to account for all the promises he made to the good people of this country and why he failed to fulfill them” as well as his neglect of the “massive acts of corruption this country has witnessed since Independence. “