Moments after the president’s nomination of one of the freshly nominated justices, a photo of the justice surfaced on social media.
A 2016 campaign poster for the New Patriotic Party showed Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu running for the Ho central constituency seat. One of the Supreme Court justices selected by the president is Ernest Yao Gaewu.
Justice Yao Gaewu was appointed from the High Court, and Justices Barbara Frances Ackah-Yensu, George Kingsley Koomsom, and Samuel Kwame Adibu Asiedu were all appointed from the Court of Appeal.
Due to upcoming openings in the Supreme Court, the appointment was made on the advice of the Judicial Council.
On the floor of the House, Alban Bagbin, Speaker of the House, announced this.
He stated that the president is asking the parliament’s approval before appointing the candidates as Supreme Court justices.
“He is totally satisfied that each person is duly qualified, and eminently fit to fulfill the tasks of justice of the top court,” the president stated in a statement to parliament.
The Ghana Police Service and the President’s Office are thought to be the most corrupt organizations in the nation.
The Ghana Center for Democratic Development conducted Afrobarometer research, the results of which are presented here (CDD-Ghana).
The study discovered that the Police, with a score of 65 percent, was at the top of the food chain, while the Presidency came in second with a score of 55 percent.
Members of Parliament were ranked third in the group by the report, receiving a score of 54%.
Positive evaluations of the President’s performance, according to the assessment, fell by 31 percentage points between 2019 and 2022, from 61 percent to 30 percent.
Following suit in that order were judges and magistrates, tax officials, and the Electoral Commission.
This was announced at a gathering in Accra that the CDD-Ghana organized.
The initiative had a tenuous balance between democratic governance, institutional trust, and corruption.
An investigation into a consulting agreement between the Northern Development Authority and the A&Qs Consortium has been launched by the Special Prosecutor’s office. The Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Program’s consulting contract is the subject of the investigation.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor has ordered the Controller and Accountant General’s office to halt payments.
Additionally, the current Chief Executive, pertinent prior officers, and owners of A&Qs have been invited for interrogation and released on bail along with the Coordinator for Special Initiatives Programs Napagatia Sulemana.
All those implicated, according to the Office of the Special Prosecutor, will be charged and arraigned.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor made the post on its’ official Facebook page
Background
The Northern Development Authority (NDA) has been the target of a contract amendment scandal in which a Gh5.7Million contract signed by the company’s most recent CEO was magically increased after the job was completed and payment was due. During his tenure as CEO of NDA, Dr. Alhassan Anamzoya awarded a contract to the company A&QS Consortium for a sum of $5,720,000 that was authorized by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) as part of the government’s Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Program, according to a series of exposés by Dr. Anamzoya (IPEP).
On January 16, 2020, the PPA gave Dr. Anamzoya’s NDA the go-ahead to employ single-source procurement to hire a variety of consultants to undertake the IPEP program for a cost of Gh5.7 million.
However, when Dr. Anamzoya left NDA, the contract ‘falsified’ itself and Dr. Anamzoya’s faked signature, raising the total contract amount to Gh10,400,000 rather than the Gh5.7Million originally agreed upon.
Only a small portion needed to be cleared before payment was made, despite the obvious deception and potential criminal consequences.
For 11 constituencies in the Upper West Region, the NDA under Dr. Anamzoya hired the A&Qs Firm to provide Consultancy Supervision at a cost of 5,720,000 with PPA permission. Despite the fact that the award letter signed by Anamzoya and the associated PPA approval indicated an amount of $5,720,000, it is claimed that the contract was altered to reflect GHC $10,400,000 before being submitted for payment, of which 30% was made.
The current NDA CEO, Sumaila Abdul Rahman, who has not publicly responded to the claims, is accused of committing the claimed violations in order to inflate the numbers and maybe steal from the government.
Despite several requests to the Chief of Staff and the Special Prosecutor on this matter, it was announced on June 30 that the Controller and Accountant General’s Department was prepared to make the remaining amount.
The previous NDA CEO petitioned Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, the Chief of Staff, regarding the suspected fraud, but she did nothing, giving the appearance that the government was complicit in the sale.
Martin Kpebu claimed that he is persuaded that the President is the leader of the Criminal Syndicate at the Jubilee House and is actively involved in crimes against the state for this reason. Martin Kpebu spearheaded the appeal to the Special Prosecutor looking into the case.
Dancehall artiste Stonebwoy has made a lot of sense with his submission on generating money since he helps us realize that working hard isn’t enough to achieve financial success.
Stonebwoy, speaking in an interview about money, said that the urge to have money doesn’t guarantee that you will get money, and also, working so hard alone can never make you as rich as you want it.
According to him, working hard alone won’t make you as wealthy as you want since you also need to work wisely. If getting money is the main goal, the best thing for us to do is to all go and massage a bank, which isn’t always easy.
In his proposal, Stonebwoy helped us understand that while working hard alone won’t get you as rich as you want, working clever will, even though we think this formation differs for everyone.
John Dramani Mahama, a former president of Ghana, and his beautiful wife, Lordina Mahama, are commemorating their 30th wedding anniversary. The former president recently revealed this in a post on his verified social media account on the well-known social media site, Facebook.
He wrote in the article that Lordina will dedicate the Bole District Hospital’s freshly constructed maternity and children’s block.
The message he posted says;
“My wife, Lordina, and I arrived in Bole earlier today as part of activities to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our marriage. Ahead of a ceremony to inaugurate a newly built Maternity and Children’s Ward for the Bole District Hospital on Tuesday, we paid a courtesy call on Bolewura Sarfo Kutuge Feso I in his palace”
The 2022 mid-year budget review submitted by the Finance Minister is “nothing but hollow,” according to the minority caucus in Parliament.
The caucus claims that Ken Ofori-Atta blew a great opportunity to explain to Ghanaians the main problems impacting them and how those problems would be resolved.
Speaking to the media after the budget was delivered, Cassiel Ato Forson, a member of parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam, claimed the presentation was very sparse.
The budget was “very empty. Everything in this country is not working yet the Minister responsible for Finance appeared before us and said nothing, he failed to address the very concerns of the ordinary Ghanaians.”
“Today, he comes here once again only to tell us that he has missed all the targets he set in the 2022 budget, every one of them,” he said.
While expecting Ken Ofori-Atta to address Ghana’s debt, the former deputy finance minister stated that “today, our public debt is in excess of 400 billion cedis yet the Minister in this document fails to talk about the public debt.”
As a result, he urged the New Patriotic Party to pass the reins to the opposition National Democratic Congress in order to stabilize the economy.
“We can do it, we have done it before,” he said.
The Finance Minister in presenting the mid-year budget review said that the overall Real GDP for 2021 grew strongly by 5.4 percent compared to 0.5 percent recorded in 2020 and the revised 2021 annual target of 5.1 percent.
He disclosed that non-oil GDP growth also increased to 6.9 percent compared to a growth of 1.0 percent recorded in 2020, and the revised 2021 target of 7.0 percent while the overall budget deficit of GH¢28,095 million (5.6% of GDP), against a deficit target of GH¢19,730 million (3.9% of GDP).
“Furthermore, based on the developments for the first six months of 2022 and the outlook for the rest of the year, we have accordingly revised the macro-fiscal targets for 2022 as follows: Overall GDP growth rate of 3.7 percent, down from 5.8 percent; Non-Oil GDP growth rate of 4.3 percent, down from 5.9 percent, End period inflation of 28.5 percent, up from 8 percent; the overall fiscal deficit of 6.6% of GDP, down from 7.4%”, he announced.
Ghana’s parliament has been urged to be more transparent by the Parliamentary Network Africa (PNAfrica).
According to leader Sammy Obeng, when the media or cameras are not there, the members appear to be working, but as soon as they spot the cameras, they all start acting in a way that will allow their supporters to see them in action.
He also wants the Ghanaian parliament to think about opening up its committees.
According to him, a number of the parliamentary committees are closed, and Ghana might “learn from other parliaments that have open committees.”
He was commenting on the most recent Index, which rated Ghana’s parliament as the best out of the 13 nations it reviewed.
According to the Africa Open Parliament Index, the Parliament of Ghana has been deemed the best (OPI).
The Africa Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations Network (APMON) and the Parliamentary Network Africa (PNAfrica) sponsored the launch of the Index (APMON).
The Index evaluated how transparent African parliaments were.
The Pan African Parliament Civil Society Forum is coordinated by the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. The Africa OPI is a joint initiative with the APMON Working Group, which is made up of renowned parliamentary monitoring organizations in Africa, including the Mzalendo Trust (Kenya), Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Parliamentary Monitoring Group (South Africa), and Africa Parliamentary Press Network (APPN). Additionally, Directorio Legislativo, an Argentinean group that was a co-founder of the Latin American Legislative Transparency Index and Network roughly ten years ago, provided technical assistance.
Transparency, civic engagement, and public accountability are the three Open Parliament criteria that are used by the Index to evaluate parliaments throughout Africa.
Sammy Obeng noted that although Ghana placed first out of the 13 nations, its score of only 63 percent was unimpressive.
He claimed that African parliaments often had “extremely low” levels of openness.
He claimed that other parliaments might visit Ghana’s parliament and learn from our experience if it were more open.
Concerning the Index
With the use of the Index, civil society will be able to collaborate with national and regional parliaments to identify structural obstacles to parliamentary openness and to jointly design changes that will increase parliaments’ capacity to improve their openness.
The Index’s justification includes:
Establish minimum criteria for evaluating the degree of parliamentary transparency in African national and regional legislative bodies.
empower parliamentary monitoring organizations (PMOs) and parliaments to keep track of the extent to which the ideals of an open parliament are being improved; Identify and share parliamentary best practices to encourage more transparent parliamentary processes; and Utilize the collaboration between civil society and parliaments to develop parliamentary reforms, guidelines, and action plans that will help parliaments better fulfill their oversight, legislative, and representational duties.
Every time the President undertakes a ministerial reshuffle, journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has discovered one positive outcome.
In regard to Sarah Adwoa Safo, the substantive minister, he claims that doing so will guarantee that the nation obtains a new Gender and Social Protection Minister.
Manasseh responded to a post by NPP member Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, who had earlier written that the growing calls for a reshuffle would not be able to address Ghana’s economic problems.
Gabby wrote on social media, “It is as if a reshuffle will instantly halt the war in Ukraine, bring down inflation, and make the cedi stronger than the dollar,” according to a post seen by Countryghana.
“It will, at least, get us a minister at the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection,” Manasseh reacted.
Since December 2021, Minister Sarah Adwoa Safo, the sector minister and member of parliament for Dome-Kwabenya, has resided in the United States.
Despite requests for the President to remove her from her position, she has clarified that her absence is necessary to attend to urgent family obligations. She recently posted something implying that she was going home.
Ghana’s financial difficulties
Ghana has seen some significant economic difficulties recently, which have caused practically all economic indices to be in bad shape.
The nation is dealing with a massive debt burden, restrictions on revenue creation, and other circumstances that have put the economy in a precarious position despite modest achievements made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The situation has gotten considerably worse as a result of recent events throughout the world, supply chain disruptions, the effects of the epidemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Ghanaian government is aiming to receive roughly $3 billion from the IMF as part of a program for economic assistance.
This was stated in a document made public by the Ministry of Finance that provided information about the government’s July meeting with representatives of the Bretton Woods institution.
The ministry indicated that it is attempting to get the money using the IMF’s High Combined Credit Exposure (HCCE) policy, a recently adopted innovative blended program.
Margaret Brew-Ward, a campaigner for women’s rights in Ghana, has related the story of a little girl who was called a witch by members of her community because she received a 30 overall on her Basic Education Certificate Exam.
The girl, who received a grade never before reached by a female in that community, was called a witch, according to the campaign manager for Action Aid Ghana.
She was labeled a witch because she defied gender stereotypes and became the first female student to receive the highest grade.
“Recently, there was a case we heard when we visited one of the communities that a girl who got around aggregate 30 in the BECE was [branded a witch]… Meanwhile, you know, in the cities, people are striving for aggregate 8, eight 1s and what not.
“Just because in that community, no girl had passed to go to the secondary school, so for a girl to do that, she [must have been a witch],” she explained on JoyNews.
Madam Brewward was talking about the variety of people who are vulnerable to being falsely accused of being witches and who are then attacked and, in some cases, killed.
The activist pointed out that in the instance of the female student, it required cooperation between her group and several official institutions to secure her support.
Attacks against people who have been labeled as witches have occurred in numerous instances over the years.
There have been occasions where mob attacks have resulted in the deaths of such accused people, despite the fact that such people typically experience social rejection and parental neglect.
While this is going on, there have been numerous requests for the state to pass legislation that forbid mistreating persons who have been accused of witchcraft.
A prominent NPP member and relative of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has responded to a recent attack on his reputation and anti-corruption credentials.
In a Facebook post, Gabby questioned Martin Kpebu’s claim that the President is a part of a criminal organization at the White House.
He asserted that some media outlets will continue to present Kpebu as a “objective” expert, analyst, and commentator despite the outburst, which he called “an outré slander and barb against Akufo-Addo.”
On Saturday, July 23, 2022, the private attorney claimed that the president has been a “abysmal failure” in the battle against corruption during an interview with Joynews’ Newsfile show.
The first gentleman of the land is adamant about battling corruption under his watch, in the opinion of attorney Kpebu, which explains why the statistics keep getting worse.
“Akufo-Addo is a member of the Jubilee House crime syndicate. The president is undoubtedly involved. He must be involved in this corruption for it to occur,” he stated.
He then apologized for the remarks and recanted them.
