The Alliance of Civil Society Organizations has kicked against the reevaluation of the controversial Agyapa deal by the current parliament.
According to the CSOs, the seventh parliament is culpable in the messy nature of the deal, thus lacks the moral high ground and capacity to supervise its reassessment.
President Akufo-Addo instructed the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, to in the interest of transparency and accountability to the Ghanaian people, the Agreements supporting the transaction that were submitted to Parliament, and approved by the House, should be resubmitted to Parliament for the approval process to start all over again.
The instruction by the president followed the detection of some anomalies in the deal by the Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu.
The Special Prosecutor in his corruption risk assessment report to President Akufo-Addo said, “…the process of the selection of the transaction advisor(s) disclosed a reasonable suspicion of bid-rigging and corruption activity including the potential for illicit financial flows and money laundering…”
Reacting to the instructions of the president, a member of the Alliance of Civil Society Organizations working in Extractive, Anti-Corruption, and Good Governance, George Osei Bimbeh said the deal must be reassessed by the eighth parliament.
According to Osei Bimbeh, who’s the Country Director for Send Ghana, the current parliament is to be blamed for the anomalies in the deal.
“We are not in good terms in terms of the time on had in parliament. Many of them are in the nuke and crannies of this country canvassing for votes. We do not have the massive attendance in the house and so I am a bit skeptical in terms of the kind of work that will go into it and I think that if anything at all, it shouldn’t be considered the lifetime of this parliament,” he was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, the President in a statement from the Jubilee House believes reevaluating the deal by the seventh parliament will help address the concerns raised, principally, by the Minority, about having been given very limited time to subject properly the various Agreements to proper scrutiny.
He said the transaction documents to be resubmitted to Parliament are the Relationship Agreement, the Assignment Agreement, the Allocation Agreement, and the Investment Agreement.
