IGNORE THE FACE SAVING AND DELUSIONS
IGNORE THE FACE-SAVING AND DELUSIONS - THE 7TH PARLIAMENT’S APPROVED AGYAPA ROYALTIES’ TRANSACTION AGREEMENTS OF 14TH AUGUST 2020 DIED AND WAS BURIED WITH AGYAPA ANTI-CORRUPTION RISK ASSESSMENT REPORT
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The Agyapa Royalties Transaction Agreements submitted by the Government of Ghana’s self-anointed Anti-corruption Moses, the last anti-corruption redeeming messiah of Ghana, (Our Moses), H. E. the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to the 7th Parliament of the Republic of Ghana on 13th August 2020 and hurriedly approved by that Parliament by Resolution the next day, 14th August, 2020 intended as an annuity in perpetuity for the benefit of Our Moses’ Family and Friends died with the Special Prosecutor’s Agyapa Anti- Corruption Assessment Report dated 15th October 2020 and was buried forever with the termination of the tenure of the 7th Parliament on 6th January 2021. And it is already a year today since I resigned as the Special Prosecutor in protest on account of that grand suspected corruption.
The Agyapa Anti-Corruption Risk Assessment Report and the President’s illegal and unconstitutional reaction on the report to me in his office on 20th October 2020 and 1st November 2020 exposed to me the true and real nature of Nana Akufo-Addo’s presentation of self over the decades of his political activism as the only incarnation of the mythical biblical Moses to lead Ghana out of its endemic corruption and bad governance. It finally confirmed the gradual impression I was forming over the previous upwards of two years working with him as the Special Prosecutor that in his view only his political opponents should be amenable to investigation and prosecution for suspected commission of corruption and corruption-related offences.
But I upstaged our Moses’ unconstitutional request to me directly on Sunday, 1st November 2020 to shelve any further action by my office on the report and to allow him to issue a statement or directive referring the whole Agyapa Transaction Agreements’ matter back to Parliament through the Minister of Finance for reconsideration by my press statement of the next morning, 2nd November 2020. I immediately followed this up with the submission of the full 64-page Agyapa Anti-Corruption Risk Assessment Report to Moses the President as the main addressee, and to the Speaker, the Majority, and the Minority Leaders of Parliament as copy addressees. I also made the facts contained in the full 64-page report known to the Ghanaian electorate the same afternoon in exercise of my rights to defend the 1992 Constitution.
The role of Civil Society Organizations and other stakeholders in opposing the Agyapa Agreements, the approval by Parliament pursuant to the Parliamentary Resolution of 14th August 2020, and the determination by Moses and the Family to list Agyapa Royalties Limited on the London Stock Exchange by 30th December 2020 is now a matter of notorious public knowledge. But it was only after I had commenced the anti-corruption risk assessment and issued a written warning to the Minister of Finance against any attempt to undermine the anti-corruption risk assessment by my office by taking any steps in furtherance of listing the Agyapa Royalties Limited on the London Stock Exchange that the Ministry of Finance committed itself in promising in its written reply not “...to proceed with the IPO ahead of the results of the corruption risk assessment by your Office. Additionally, we will be required to fully disclose in the prospectus to the transaction, the outcome of any investigation by your office prior to approval by the respective regulations of stock exchanges in Ghana and the United Kingdom.”
Any hope that my office was going to endorse the Family and Friends’ Agyapa agenda changed on 3rd November 2020 when the ingratiating press release on the website of the Ministry of Finance dated 9th October 2020 was now superseded by a new press release entitled: “Re: Agyapa Royalties Transactions – Directives by His Excellency the President Following the Release of the Report of the Special Prosecutor” – a clear interference by the President in the performance of the independent functions of the Special Prosecutor for his benefit and that of other suspected Family and Friends named in the anti-corruption risk assessment report.
The directives of the President under the 7th Government and Parliament of the 1992 Constitution were not laid before Parliament before the end of both the 7th Government and Parliament on 6th January 2021. The deception that the Agyapa Royalties Transaction Agreements which constituted the subject matter of the Parliamentary Resolution dated 14th August 2020 is still available for reconsideration by the 8th Parliament of Ghana is a self- imposed delusion or one of our Moses’ usual deployments of empty rhetoric for face saving for the damning contents of the corruption and corruption-related assessments made in the Agyapa Anti-Corruption Assessment Report dated 15th October 2020.
Our Moses is incidentally the President of the Republic of the 8th Government under the Constitution and has reappointed and repositioned substantially the same members of the Family and Friends into the Government and other strategic public offices. This permits our Moses to submit entirely new Gold Royalties Monetization Transaction Agreements to the 8th Parliament for consideration. Our Moses with his very slim majority in the 8th Parliament, for instance, repositioned his former Deputy Minister of Finance who appeared before the Finance Committee of the 7th Parliament to defend the Agyapa Transaction Agreements as the current Chairman of the Parliament’s Finance Committee. The former Chairman of the Minerals Income Investment Fund who was an active player in the Agyapa Transaction Agreements in the 7th Government has also now been repositioned as a Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources working under Moses’ former confidant and Deputy Chief of Staff as the new Minister for the Ministry. Almost all the appointments and/or repositioned public officers are members of the Family and Friends labouring under conflict of interest by their declared commitment to doing anything Moses, the President demands of them even before they could be approved by Parliament or the Council of State and appointed to positions by the President, as the case may be.
The ground is, therefore, set for another attempt by our Moses and his Family and Friends to craft and present to Ghanaians a new proposal for the monetization of the nation’s gold royalty resources for prior democratic public discussions and input before submission to the 8th Parliament for consideration and possible approval.
Be that as it may, stopping our anti-corruption Moses President, and his Family and Friends’ suspected corruption agenda of creating, looting, and sharing our collective national gold royalty minerals resource patrimony as their personal annuity in perpetuity was more important to me than securing convictions against petty corruption offenders or continuing in office as Special Prosecutor under that Government. Strategically, my resignation on 16th November 2020 and its inevitable acceptance by the President on the 17th November 2020 further put the whole corruption infested Agyapa Royalties Transaction Agreements approved by the 7th Parliament and the enabling environment of corruption created by the 7th Government in the domestic and international domain for additional critical scrutiny. This made it impossible for Moses and his Family and Friends to benefit from our collective natural resource patrimony as their personal annuity in perpetuity under the smokescreen of the Agyapa Royalties Transaction Agreements of their secretive off-shore Agyapa Royalties Limited hiding in the Island of Jersey in the United Kingdom.
It is a year since my audacious extrication of myself and my name from the most corrupt government I had worked with during my long public service for decades fighting greed and impunity in Ghana. I continue to feel vindicated by the President and his Family and Friends’ shameless continued involvement in suspected corruption and corruption-related criminal activities. The most recent pronouncements by, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference on the failure of the Government to fight corruption and protect the public purse; Dr. Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe, a founding member of the New Patriotic Party’s recent condemnation of the blatant exhibition of corruption displayed during the recent approval elections proceedings of proposed Chief Executive Officers of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs); and yesterday’s charges levelled against the President, and his Family and Friends by no less a person than Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobey, a former close friend and associate of the President against the President’s anti-constitutional conduct reconfirms my personal experiences with the 7th Government that everyday corruption by the Family and Friends gets worse under the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s Government and Presidency.
On the contrary, political opponents continue to be dehumanized as mere objects for show trials of fighting corruption and never any member of the Family and Friends or associates as though Moses our President was running Ghana as George Orwell’s Animal Farm. But the Bright Simons’, the John Gatsi’s and the like with their incisive and objective criticism of the suspected corrupt and opaque Aker Energy arrangements, and the opaque Big Brother data surveillance procurement regime arrangements continue to give me some hope for this country’s future in fighting against corruption.
The Agyapa Royalties Transaction Agreements approved by the 7th Parliament on 14th August 2020 was the most daring and grandest suspected corruption attempted on the Chiefs and people of Ghana since independence. Consequently, as the same Minister of Finance presents the Nation’s Budget 2022 to Parliament today, 17th November 2021, let each Ghanaian patriot of whatever political persuasion put Ghana First and be alert as to whether our anti-corruption Moses will through any subterfuges attempt to resurrect the dead Agyapa Transaction Agreements in any new form and at what cost to We The People as the beneficiaries of this nation’s natural resources will be.
Let every patriot put Ghana First and protect the public purse from the Family and Friends looting machine!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu