Mahama’s Aide in $1.84m dubious sole-sourced contract

Barely a few days after the exposure of President Mahama’s attempt to bribe the NPP’s Northern Region Chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu, it has emerged that Malin Investment Limited, the firm owned and run by the President’s Special Assistant and his mother who happens to be a relative of the President, and which was used as the conduit for transferring the bribery vehicle to Bugri Naabu, is the beneficiary of several projects running at several millions of dollars.

All of them were awarded on sole-sourced basis, with the latest contract valued at US$1.84 million (GHS7.344 million).

Malin, which is at the centre of the Presidential bribery allegation, was, as recent as March last year, awarded, on sole-contract basis, a 5Km road construction contract by the Public Procurement Agency valued at US$1.84 Million (GH¢7.344 Million).

The project, which was expected to have been completed by March of this year, 2016, is still hanging though payments have been made to Malin.

Officials of the Public Procurement Agency are tight-lipped over the circumstances under which Malin Investment Limited was awarded this project on a sole-source basis, as well as on the other projects of which they are beneficiaries.

However, a source indicated that every project awarded by the agency had been done on direct orders from Ibrahim Mahama or operatives from the Flagstaff House.

The sole-sourcing provision of the Public Procurement Act, which was supposed to be an exception, has become the norm under the Mahama-led NDC government, and has been the basis upon which all the major fraudulent and corrupt deals have been awarded, including the Smartty’s bus branding scandal, the AMERI and KARPOWER deals, among others.