The Fourth Estate CMS

Author: Seth J. Bokpe

Lighthouse Story: Top bishop intervened, but church still refused to respond

Months before its first publication, The Fourth Estate contacted a prominent bishop within the charismatic fraternity in Ghana to get an audience of the leadership of the Lighthouse Chapel International (LCI.

The news entity also wrote to the church to request information/interview on the allegations raised by six former bishops and pastors of LCI.g

But, on both occasions, the church refused to comment on the matter.

These and other revelations are contained in the defence filed by The Fourth Estate team in response to a defamation suit brought against it by Lighthouse.

The church had claimed among other things in a defamation suit that the publication by The Fourth Estate in April last year was one-sided.

The Fourth Estate, however, indicated that when the top charismatic bishop intervened and Lighthouse refused to speak to the allegations, it wrote again to the church more than a month before the publication. The church failed to respond.

The church has, in three separate suits, claimed that the reportage had dipped the church’s name in the mud.

The suit named the Editor-in-Chief of The Fourth Estate, Manasseh Azure Awuni; the reporter who worked on the story, Edwin Appiah; the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), as defendants.

In its defence, The Fourth Estate refuted the church’s claim that the stories were one-sided and prejudicial.

According to the defence filed on January 6, 2022, The Fourth Estate “offered [the] plaintiff [LCI] the opportunity of a sought response/reaction including through an equally well known and respected preacher-intermediary, as well as by writing formally to request information but plaintiff declined, neglected, refused or failed to avail itself by any means.”

That, letter dated March 17, 2021, was addressed to the Presiding Bishop of Lighthouse, Dag Heward-Mills.

You may also be interested in:

Darkness in a lighthouse Part 2: “Suicide attempts, begging pastors”

Darkness in a lighthouse(3): Bishop Dag prayed for me to divorce my wife

Even though the church failed to respond, The Fourth Estate quoted significantly from the church’s response to one of the six pastors as well as the church’s position in the issues from correspondence between the church and the pastors.

In its defence, The Fourth Estate said the publication was based on matters of fact, privilege, justified, in the public interest and fair comment.

Background

Six former ministers of the Lighthouse sued the church in April last year for non-payment of their pension contributions, economic exploitation and emotional abuse.

They said they had been drawn into the ministry by their spiritual father, founder and Presiding Bishop of LCI, Dag Heward-Mills. Most of them, who served as student-leaders in the gospel, said they were not given employment letters.

There was no formal employer-employee relationship when they transitioned into full-time service of the Lord after graduation. They said they trusted their spiritual father, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, and that defined their working relationship with the church. This, they said, the church took advantage of and mistreated them.

They, therefore, resigned and sued LCI, which used to be the epicentre of their spiritual and social lives. They are praying the court to compel the church to pay their pension contributions and damages for the violation of their human rights by the church.

They believe there are more silent victims among the 111 bishops and over 2,300 pastors of Lighthouse, who are currently shepherding more than 6,070 churches in 92 countries across the world.

Apart from enforcing their rights, the six former pastors say the reason they are speaking up is to ensure that those still serving in the church do not suffer what they have been through.

The church, in response, counter-sued its former pastors and now The Fourth Estate for the fallout.

In its statement of claim, the LCI said the relationship between the church and its founder, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, was inseparable.

Bishop Heward-Mills, the medical doctor who dropped the stethoscope for the cross in 1991, preaches unalloyed loyalty—one the resigned pastors now claim took the better part of their lives in exchange for compensations that did not reflect the church’s own policies.

LCI’s case against The Fourth Estate

The church claimed that The Fourth Estate’s publication meant that the LCI was engaged in a “long term deceptive agenda of inducing its employees and volunteers into untoward reliance on the plaintiff and so succumbing to subservient dependence on the plaintiff.”

The LCI also claimed the publications sought to suggest that the church was “not only intolerant but extremely callous, insensitive, inconsiderate and cold-hearted in its treatment of and abandonment of its volunteers and employees with exacting demands calculated to hound them out of their posts.”

“In the immediate aftermath of the publications there was a complete uproar in the plaintiff’s [Lighthouse] branches throughout Ghana with many of the members completely horrified and threatening to leave the church, which some actually did,” LCI also claimed its defamation suit.

The LCI claimed The Fourth Estate’s stories had profit motives and was launched “within a media space of fierce competition for attention in which the more sensational a story is, the more readership and consequent financial gain.”

The Fourth Estate defence

The Fourth Estate said far from being the money-making machine the LCI claimed, the platform was a non-profit publication. This explains the absence of an opportunity for advertisement or advertorials on the website.

The defence explained that at all times the publications were reliant “on facts contained in arranged interviews, other official documents and a body of correspondence between officers of plaintiff [LCI] including its Human Resource outfit, and plaintiff’s founder and leader on the one part and [the] said former employees of plaintiff and consultants/ advisors on other the part, and formal complaints to the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).”

It also grounded the stories as qualifying for privilege and public interest, citing reasons including the fact the matters were subject to ongoing litigation in the High Court, and that they were based on the outcome of investigations by The Fourth Estate.

The defence also said the issues were of significant public interest. It said the LCI had an immense public status and asserted a lot of influence and that a critique of non-compliance of the LCI with the Pensions Act in defaulting to pay the contribution of its employee was a matter of legitimate public concern and fair comment.

The Fourth Estate’s lawyers also reasoned that the publications also qualified to be fair comment/ opinion.

It argued that what the church was seeking was “an unconstitutional censorship in the nature of a gagging order against the defendant having failed in its attempts to dictate what in its view ought to be the accepted professional standards of journalism, dictate the content and control the editorial direction of [the] said publication.”

The defence said the LCI’s chief aim was an attempt “in a game of chance to use this suit to unlawfully shackle the defendants and prevent them from exercising their lawful professional duties in what in commonly known in jurisdictions, including the United States of America as SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).”

The case is yet to be called in court.

January 12, 2022
The Fourth Estate named in 10 best investigative stories from sub-Saharan Africa in 2021

An investigation by The Fourth Estate has been named among the best investigative reports in sub-Saharan Africa for 2021.

This comes barely a year into the existence of The Fourth Estate a not-for-profit journalism project by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).

The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), an international hub for the world’s investigative reporters, named the “The Licensed sex predator, an investigative piece by The Fourth Estate’s Editor-in-Chief, Manasseh Azure Awuni, among the top 10 best investigative stories from the continent.

The ten stories that made the list were selected from eight countries—Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Rwanda, Liberia and Uganda.

“This collection of 10 investigative stories across eight countries in Africa is a demonstration of what’s possible when reporters on the continent receive the right leadership and support,” the GIJN wrote.

In an investigation that lasted over a year, The Fourth Estate revealed how some women have been sexually assaulted by a self-styled physiotherapist, “Dr” Jonathan Ohene Nkunim in his Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre.

FULL VIDEO DOCUMENTARY: “The Licensed Sex Predator” (thefourthestategh.com)

“Dr” Ohene Nkunim’s victims included a couple who had gone to Nature’s Hand Therapeutic Centre, Gbawe, Accra in 2018 to seek his help to be able to conceive. He ended up sleeping with the woman. Feeling guilty about the affair, she confessed to her husband and that was how the seven-year-old marriage ended.

A young woman was on the verge of suicide because the heart-wrenching pain from her spinal cord convinced her that ending her life was a better option. Someone offered her a lifeline, Jonathan Ohene Nkunim’s hotline.

Ohene Nkunim raped her the first day she entered the facility in pain and lay on the massage bed.

He left incriminating evidence in his WhatsApp conversation with her after the ordeal. He admitted he did not seek her permission before having sex with her.

Nkunim claimed the procedure he wanted to perform required sexual arousal. He said he should have “sensitised” her before proceeding. Nkunim then apologised profusely. But he did not stop.

Eulogising the story, the GIJN said:

“Ghana’s latest investigative journalism nonprofit, The Fourth Estate, created by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), was the force behind one of the most consequential investigations to come out of Africa this past year.

“Braving harrowing testimonies from victims and disturbing evidence from an undercover investigation, reporter Manasseh Azure Awuni exposed a health practitioner who used his registered practice to sexually assault women seeking reproductive treatment and support. The three-part series is one of those instances where an undercover investigation provides irrefutable evidence, despite denials by the perpetrator.

“Eventually, the overwhelming proof against that proprietor led to his arrest and confession, putting to an end to his exploitation of desperate victims.”

The GIJN described as “remarkable” the level of investigative journalism that emerged from sub-Saharan Africa in 2021 particularly at a time newsrooms in Africa were increasingly struggling with shortages of cash and threats to press freedom.

“For many of the eye-catching stories that made it to this year’s editor’s pick, the reporting time ranged from three months to a full year. This points to a growing ability by journalists in Africa to dedicate ample time — and, indeed, resources — to a single story,” it said.

But there is more to it.

“Several factors account for this strong dedication to in-depth reporting. First, nonprofit media outlets are helping fill the vacuum created by cash and resource-strapped traditional media organizations. Foundations and development agencies are also offering more consistent and more generous reporting grants, with greater opportunities for long-form investigations, even for freelance journalists,” it explained.

Here are some other major stories reported by The Fourth Estate in 2021:

Darkness in a lighthouse (Part One): Pastors recount abuse and trauma

Darkness in a lighthouse (Part 2): “Suicide attempts, begging pastors”

Darkness in a lighthouse (Part 3): Bishop Dag prayed for me to divorce my wife

FRAUD AT COVID-19 LABS: Frontiers, Jubilee House Clinic Involved

The Dubai in Cote D’Ivoire: Scores of Ghanaians lured and trapped in a net called Qnet

THE BONGO SCANDAL: Assembly withdraws GH₵187,000 from contractor’s bank account without permission

CCTV footage reveals National Security raid in Asankragua, and why DSP Azugu is leaving

Who built the Keta Sea Defence wall? NAPO’s false, misleading claims

#BawumiaSpeaks: contradictions on number of CCTV cameras installed

TESTING RTI LAW: The 33 public institutions that passed or failed

The hanging estates of Aburi: a waiting disaster

INSIDE STORY: The faces behind five impounded Rosewood containers

January 7, 2022
Water, essential drugs shortage forces Tamale Central Hospital to cancel surgeries

Patients of the Tamale Central Hospital who need to go under the surgeon’s knife may have to look elsewhere. This follows the decision of the hospital to freeze all surgeries.

The surgeries have been cancelled because the hospital has run out of the logistics necessary to keep its theatre running for the last three weeks.

“It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of the cancellation of all surgeries with effect from Thursday, 23^rd December 2021. This decision has been necessitated by the shortage of essential supplies and water in the hospital,” a memo from the hospital’s specialist surgeon to its medical superintendent said.

According to the memo, the health facility had been coping with the shortage by asking patients to buy “almost all the consumables for their surgeries.” That decision had to be put on hold because of “negative media discussions”, the memo dated December 22, 2021, added.

Ordinarily, patients who cannot access medical care at the Tamale Central Hospital can opt for the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), but this will not be the case this festive season.

The Fourth Estate’s sources at the TTH, the biggest referral hospital in the five regions of the north, say there is “a break in elective surgery and specialist outpatient department (OPD).”

The TTH, however, performs emergency surgeries.

The shortage of essential drugs in major hospitals in Tamale is not new. In March 2015, an acute essential drugs shortage hit the 800-bed Tamale Teaching Hospital, forcing the management to ask patients to buy their medications from outside.

The most recent case of the cancellation of surgeries at the Tamale Teaching Hospital was in July 2020. The hospital cancelled 900 surgeries in the first 12 weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in Ghana.

The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation reported that the hospital’s Head of the Department of Surgery, Professor Stephen Tabiri, attributed the decision to uncertainty over the nature of the novel virus, which had caused some anxiety among hospital management and staff.

It compelled the hospital to suspend non-emergency surgeries, including cancer surgeries.

He said some patients suffered as a result, but added that there was nothing the hospital could do under the circumstances.

“If you cancel a cancer surgery, you finish everything. If the patient is supposed to go for surgery and you cancel it, at the end of the twelve (12) weeks, the cancer will spread over the whole body and there is nothing you can do,” he explained.

Hospitals in the Tamale metropolis are also caught in the snag of the perennial water shortages. Residents in the Northern regional capital have been struggling with this for decades. The hospitals have not been spared.

The Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported in January 2007 that work came to a standstill at the Tamale Teaching Hospital between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. following an acute water shortage.

The Laboratory Department was the worst affected. Patients were either sent home or not attended to. Some patients had to send for water from home for bathing.

Similar water shortages were again experienced in 2014 and 2015. The major referral hospital had to rely on tanker services and the Ghana National Fire Service for water supplies.

Water shortage in Tamale is a peculiar problem Credit: Savannah News

It is for this reason that when President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo cut the sod for the construction of the Tamale Water Supply Project in July 2020, the city erupted with jubilations.

The Tamale Water Supply Project is meant to expand the supply capacity of the Tamale Metropolitan area. It is aimed at improving the flexibility of water supply by building a new water supply system that will rely on the White Volta at Yapei. The system is expected to pump 29.7 million gallons per day to households and institutions.

“This will be, by far, the biggest water project in the five northern regions, and the second biggest in the history of our country,” President Akufo-Addo said.

But 18 months later, the project still remains a campaign promise. Not much has been done. The taps still cough air when opened.

While residents wait for the president’s promise to be fulfilled, patients awaiting surgery are running out of hope.

The Tamale Central Hospital has promised that “surgeries will resume as soon as supplies are provided.”

The question both patients and the management of the hospital cannot answer is, “How soon?”

December 24, 2021
Minister’s resignation: investigative journalist threatened with shooting, burning

Investigative journalist Edward Adeti has been threatened with death threats. The Bolgatanga-based journalist, who recently joined The Fourth Estate, received the death threat when a Facebook post about his move was published.

“This is the worst I have received so far. The faceless texter or texters telling me that I will be shot and burnt as it happened to some police officers in Bolgatanga [Upper East regional capital]. When things like this happen. I quickly think of my family,” he said of his fears.

The text message to The Fourth Estate journalist read:

The Maltaaba Bank is in reference to The Fourth Estate’s expose on illegal deals between officials of the Maltaaba Community Bank and the Bongo District Assembly.

Adeti has received similar threats in the past. In May 2019, the journalist reported a series of death threats to the Bureau of National Investigations after his investigative work forced Rockson Bukari, a Minister of State, to resign on April 29, 2019.

Adeti had recorded the minister allegedly trying to bribe him to drop an investigative story.

The investigative story produced in 2018 exposed a compromising relationship between a Chinese mining firm and a judge handling a case involving that firm. The judge at the centre of the scandal, Justice Jacob Boon, eventually recused himself when the case was brought before him at the Bolgatanga High Court Room One on December 17, 2018.

Adeti recalled that one Mubarak, a resident in the Upper East Region, went on Facebook and wrote similar threats that “ I was a fool and would live to regret this.”

He said, since then, the intimidation had been far and in between until last Friday when he received the latest threats.

The Fourth Estate’s checks show that the number is registered in the name of Awine Atiah.

Adeti said he suspected that the person who sent the message was probably working with others because of the word “we” used in the text message he received at 4:52 am.

After his resignation, Mr. Bukari was never put to court after the incident.

Adeti, therefore, wondered how a court could exonerate him and added that the latest threat was based on what he described as a false publication on Dreamzfmonline that endangered his life and that of his family.

He has since reported the matter to the police who have invited the management of Dreamz FM for a meeting on Wednesday, December 22, 2021.

For many investigative journalists in Ghana, the brutal killing of investigative journalist Ahmed Suale on January 16, 2019, is a constant reminder that they are endangered.

December 21, 2021
VIDEO: Parliament investigates “serious issue of injustice against poor” Zoomlion workers

The Member of Parliament for Pru East, Dr Kwabena Donkor, was boiling with rage on the floor of parliament.

He is the ranking member of the Employment and Labour Relations Committee of Parliament and had sighted a breakdown of payments made to beneficiaries of the Sanitation Module of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).

He was shocked at the fact that the government of Ghana, through the YEA, paid Zoomlion Ghana Limited GH₵ 600 per person per month, but the company paid each worker GH₵ 180 and kept the rest of the GH₵ 420 as management and logistics fees.

He said it was an injustice being done to the poor women who swept the markets and streets and asked parliament to have a look at it.

The Speaker of Parliament, Alban S.K. Bagbin, directed the Employment and Labour Relations Committee, to investigate the matter and report to the House in February 2022.

Here is the video of Dr Kwabena Donkor’s submission:

Background of Contract fraught with allegations of Fraud

The anomalies with this contract were first revealed in 2013 by Manasseh Azure Awuni in the GYEEDA Corruption Scandal.

The contract was being renewed every two years. The 2011 to 2013 contract expired in February 2013.

Within the period, the government of Ghana investigative committee, which probed the scandal after Manasseh’s investigations found the contract to have been inflated by at least GH₵ 74 million (or 21 million US dollars at the time). The committee recommended discontinuation of the contract but the government did not act on the findings.

The Akufo-Addo-led NPP criticized the contract in opposition but in government, they extended it without addressing the malfeasance they criticised.

Between March 2013 and February 2019, that deal cost the nation GH₵ 1.62 billion (or $400million) without any written agreement or approval from the Public Procurement Authority.

Before the terms of the contract were changed slightly after 2019, the government was paying Zoomlion GH₵500 a month, and the company paid the sweepers GH₵ 100 and kept GH₵ 400 as management fees.

GYEEDA was investigated.

The GYEEDA investigative Committee asked for a breakdown of the management fees in 2013 and after analysing the figures, the Committee came up with the following in its report.

On page 131 of the GYEEDA Report that got Abuga Pele and Philip Assibit jailed, the Committee made adverse findings on Zoomlion’s contract. This is what the committee said:

“A schedule provided by Zoomlion to support the amount of management fees raises serious value for money issues. We have analyzed below a few of the cost lines within the schedule to reveal the significant windfall profits that Zoomlion is making. In the schedule that Zoomlion provided, Zoomlion suggests that at a management fee rate of GH₵400, it is making a loss of circa GHS18 per beneficiary. Aside being illogical, this claim is also inaccurate and deceptive.

“By Zoomlion’s own admission, the cost of a fully fitted tricycle is GH₵1,200 and they are replaced every two years. The total number of tricycles in circulation is less than 10,000 (about 6,000). Even assuming 10,000 tricycles, Zoomlion requires only GHS12m every two years to replace them but charges the MOYS GH₵37.5 million, an excess of over GH₵25.5m”

“By Zoomlion’s own admission, the tricycles are robust and hardly breakdown yet MOYS pays GH₵22.82m over the term of the contract to repair them. The cost of repair is almost double the cost of purchase. This is inappropriate.”

“Zoomlion suggests that it buys motorbikes for its supervisors (numbering about 600) and replaces them every two years. Zoomlion suggests that the cost of a motorbike is circa GH1500, meaning that Zoomlion requires GHS900K to replace them every two years. MOYS however pays GH₵49.64m over the two years period for motorbikes. This is an overcharge of circa GH₵48.7m.”

Despite these findings, no attempt was made to retrieve the monies or prosecute the government officials and private sector players that were responsible for these amounts.

The Akufo-Addo administration campaigned on the scandal but continued with the contracts when it won power in December 2016.

You may also be interested in:

FULL DOCUMENTARY: The COVID-19 spraying scandal initiated by President Akufo-Addo

Government pays a Jospong Company GHC 95 million without any contract—Auditor-General.

“Suspend payments to Zoomlion” -Auditor-General orders as contract sum hits GH₵324 million – The Fourth Estate

December 20, 2021
“We’ve lost members because of your report,” Lighthouse sues ‘The Fourth Estate’

The Lighthouse Chapel International (LCI) says it is counting its losses, including loss of members, after The Fourth Estate’s publications on six of its pastors who have resigned and sued the church for economic exploitation.

The six have said repeated exploitation and emotional abuse forced them to resign from the church.

“In the immediate aftermath of the publications there was a complete uproar in the plaintiff’s [Lighthouse] branches throughout Ghana with many of the members completely horrified and threatening to leave the church, which some actually did,” the church said in a defamation suit against some members of The Fourth Estate team.

The suit named the Editor-in-Chief of The Fourth Estate, Manasseh Azure Awuni; the reporter who worked on the story, Edwin Appiah; the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah and the Media Foundation for West Africa(MFWA), as defendants.

The Fourth Estate is a non-profit journalism project of the MFWA.

Eight months after the publication, the church said it was unable to “quantify and or particularize the loss it has suffered or sustained” after the series of stories on the issue.

The LCI said it would amend the suit when it is done taking stock of damages and the losses “become available.”

Six former ministers of the church sued the church in April this year for non-payment of their pension contributions, economic exploitation and emotional abuse.

You may also be interested in:

Darkness in a lighthouse Part 2: “Suicide attempts, begging pastors”

Darkness in a lighthouse(3): Bishop Dag prayed for me to divorce my wife

They say they were drawn into the ministry by their spiritual father, founder and Presiding Bishop of LCI, Dag Heward-Mills. Most of them, who served as student-leaders in the gospel, said they were not given employment letters. There was no formal employer-employee relationship when they transitioned into full-time service of the Lord after graduation. This, they said, the church took advantage of and mistreated them.

The six have resigned and sued LCI, which used to be the epicentre of their spiritual and social lives. They are praying the court to compel the church to pay their SSNIT contributions and damages for the rights, which the church violated.

They believe there are more silent victims among the 111 bishops and over 2,300 pastors of Lighthouse, who are currently shepherding more than 6,070 churches in 92 countries across the world.

Apart from enforcing their rights, the six former pastors say the reason they are speaking up is to ensure that those still serving in the church do not suffer what they have been through.

The church, in response, counter-sued its former pastors and now The Fourth Estate for the fallout.

In its statement of claim, the LCI said the relationship between the church and its founder, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, was inseparable.

Bishop Heward-Mills, the medical doctor who dropped the stethoscope for the cross in 1991, preaches unalloyed loyalty– one the resigned pastors no longer want to be part of.

“It is the plaintiff’s contention that the relationship of the plaintiff [LCI] and its founder is a closely fused and inseparable that an attack on the plaintiff’s leader is as good as an attack, both directly and indirectly, against the plaintiff.”

The church claimed that The Fourth Estate’s publication meant that, The Lighthouse was engaged in a “long term deceptive agenda of inducing its employees and volunteers into untoward reliance on the plaintiff and so succumbing to subservient dependence on the plaintiff.”

The LCI claimed the publications sought to suggest that the church was “not only intolerant but extremely callous, insensitive, inconsiderate and cold-hearted in its treatment of and abandonment of its volunteers and employees with exacting demands calculated to house them out of their posts.”

That is not all.

LCI contended that the publication dented its image and it had “suffered considerable damage distress and embarrassment, and has also suffered special and aggravated damage.”

The church wants the court to restrain The Fourth Estate from publishing “similar words defamatory of the plaintiff.”

It also wants The Fourth Estate to apologise for the stories and also pull down all the stories.

Those stories also contain the former pastors’ accounts of the sacrifices they made in establishing churches they were forced to abandon because of a church policy.

December 17, 2021
TRAILER: The Fourth Estate to release documentary on scandal authorised by the presidency

The Fourth Estate will on, Friday, December 17, 2021, release a documentary on scandalous Covid-19 contracts that was authorised by the Office of the President.

The contracts were awarded to sanitation companies to fumigate and disinfect markets, schools and other public places in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The investigative documentary by The Fourth Estate’s Manasseh Azure Awuni reveals, with evidence, that there was no need for the contracts.

The documentary also reveals that even if there was any need for the contracts, there were existing contractual arrangements to do the work without awarding new contracts.

Besides, a number of metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies also had the capacity to do the work. However, they were asked to stop while hundreds of millions of cedis were paid to some companies with records of shady deals with the government to do the work.

The full documentary will be published on The Fourth Estate on Friday morning.

Watch the trailer below:

December 15, 2021
I fear chiefs, religious leaders more than political interference –Special Prosecutor

Ghana’s first Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, resigned from office in November 2020, alleging partisan political interference in his work.

But the man who has succeeded him, Kissi Agyebeng, says he does not fear that that kind of interference. Rather, those he’s worried about are chiefs, religious leaders and his inner circles.

“I do not really fear political interference, because before I took this position there were some assurances I [got] from the powers that be and it is not everything I can say in public. But …traditional leaders that is where I fear most. I have gone and told them something to tell their royals that if any one of them shows up at my doorstep with all due respect, I won’t accept an apology. That is resonating,” he said at a press conference to mark International Anti-Corruption Day in Accra on Thursday.

He continued: “I’m not doing it publicly, but that is what I fear most. Interference from church, friends, family. I have a family and imagine there is a family meeting and someone has committed corruption and corruption-related crime and my family head is begging on the person’s behalf, that is more difficult than the President saying this is our political person. Look the other way. That, I do not fear at all,” he said.

Mr Agyebeng is not the first public officer holder to harbour such fears—senior police officers, for instance, have complained about requests to abandon cases from religious leaders and chiefs.

Interference and precedence

Mr Amidu (left) and President Akufo-Addo took jabs at each other after the former resigned as Ghana’s first Special Prosecutor, alleging political interference in his work

Mr Amidu, who verbally brawled with President Nana Akufo-Addo after his resignation had attributed his decision to step down to the traumatic experiences he went through after he released the findings of his corruption-assessment report on the Agyapa Royalties deal.

In that transaction, the government was seeking to raise a billion dollars from the London and Ghana stock exchanges in exchange for 49% of Ghana’s mineral royalties for development projects. The deal raised suspicions from civil society and the Minority in Parliament.

Mr Amidu investigated the deal and raised issues with some aspects of it, which he said lacked value for money and also breached the country’s international transaction laws.

When Martin Amidu was appointed on February 20, 2018, many hoped that his office would become the state’s biggest arsenal against corruption. But it never was.

Mr Amidu had complained about the lack of logistics, office space, and personnel to champion his cause.

His successor, Kissi Agyebeng said he inherited an office that was in a coma and “immediately triggered the processes to set up and operationalise the Office, to staff it with specialized trained personnel and to fit it with the required material resources and equipment.”

He said the fight against corruption had, in effect, been put in reverse for three years, but his work in the last four months had resuscitated the fight to protect the public purse with a “renewed fervour.”

Mr Agyebeng, the 43-year-old Special Prosecutor, who abandoned his successful law career in August this year to chase looters of the public purse, said his office had completed a review of all the alleged cases of corruption and corruption-related offences before it.

Mr Agyebeng was sworn-in August 2021 by President Nana Akufo-Addo (right)

A line up of cases

“Currently, the OSP is investigating thirty-one (31) active cases and it will, in due course, commence the prosecution in the courts of the cases it considers probatively strong with evidence. There is no case commenced by the OSP pending in the courts at the moment,” he said.

He declined to go into the specifics offhand, but that list could include the recent Juaben MCE bribery scandal, the sacked Public Procurement Authority, A.B. Adjei’s contract for sale scandal, and the “galamsey” bribery scandal against a presidential staffer, Charles Bissue.

“Putting things out there when you are not too sure whether you want to prosecute at this stage is that you may end up destroying people’s reputation for life. Because immediately you mention that you’re this or that person there is negative attention to the person. That is why I have refrained from touching on the specific cases.”

Corruption League Table

Mr Agyebeng also plans a name and shame initiative for next year. Modelled on the globally respected Corruption Perception Index (CPI), the Annual Ghana Corruption League Table will assess perceived levels of public sector corruption in the estimation of experts and business people to be published on December 9, every year.

He calls it a “pressure pressure-for-progress drive” his version of a localized barometer of Ghana’s most corrupt institutions.

“In aid of this, public agencies would be ranked against each other on a corruption barometer,” he said with a smile.

In 2019, the Special Prosecutor’s office was allocated 180 million cedis as the war chest for the fight against corruption. Out of this, the Office received only three million cedis.

For the 2022 fiscal year, the OSP budgeted GHc 1.2 billion for capital and recurrent expenditure. However, only GHc 80 million was allocated, representing only 6.6% of what was requested.

While appreciating the government’s effort, Mr Agyebeng did not hesitate in pointing out that his office would move at the pace of a tortoise without adequate funding.

“Without money, we can’t do anything. We will be reduced to writing long letters without any force,” he said.

His predecessor wrote more epistles than he prosecuted cases.

“We need money for everything, especially our operations. On the question of whether what has been allocated is sufficient, generally in Ghana, nothing is sufficient. What has been put there, I have seen but it doesn’t match up to my expectations. But I cannot give up. I’ll continue pushing the envelope to get what we would require to establish and operationalize this office well.”

Corruption risk assessment of contracts

While his predecessor did only one risk assessment that he said informed his decision to quit, the current OSP is opening the scope to cover more than contracts.

“The OSP would carry out anti-corruption risk assessment and review of all major public contracts, legislation and draft legislation. This is intended to avoid toxic deals and the prevalence of judgment debts and arbitrary awards,” he said.

“The OSP would also require all public institutions, departments, agencies, and companies to prepare and submit Integrity Plans intended at assessing deficiencies in their regulations, procedures, policies, guidelines, administration, instructions and internal control mechanisms to determine their vulnerability and exposure to corrupt practices and the prescription of curative measures to manage such susceptibility to corruption and corruption-related offences. I am setting up internal control mechanisms to prevent corruption at the OSP itself,” Mr Agyebeng said.

December 9, 2021
Fuveme: Before and after the destructive tidal waves

On November 5, 2021, tidal waves pounded the shores of the Volta Region, reportedly leaving thousands of homes submerged and residents homeless.

But the danger has been announcing itself for years.

In Fuveme, one of the communities The Fourth Estate visited in July 2021, the doom was predictable. A school that was rebuilt after it was destroyed faced a second destruction by the tidal waves.

https://thefourthestategh.com/2021/10/14/the-school-bracing-for-a-second-disappearance-under-the-sea/

When this reporter visited Fuveme in 2016, the community pleaded for the umpteenth time their need for a sea defence wall.

It has not been built. The 2.8-kilometre Atorkor sea defence project was expected to cushion some coastal communities in the then Keta Municipality (now Anloga District) against destructive tidal waves. But the construction didn’t progress beyond Akplorwotorkor.

It meant Fuveme was left exposed. Over the years, the waves have pounded the village (Fuveme), causing extensive damage to property, sometimes cutting the inhabitants off from the rest of the district.

A large section of the fishing community has been reduced to a pile of rubble as the advancing tidal waves turbocharged by climate change continue to inch closer. It created a new estuary in May 2021.

According to experts, rising sea levels linked to the melting of polar ice caps due to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing coastal erosion.

So, the Fuveme RC Basic School became a victim of an imperial ocean claiming territories. It is an occurrence climate change experts blame on human activities such as sand winning and deforestation as well as natural causes such as wind, water.

Interestingly, the communities behind the sea defence wall in parts of Keta, Atorkor, Akplorwotorkor and Agavedzi– were left untouched.

November 17, 2021
The school bracing for a second disappearance under the sea

Four years ago, Selorm Dzaka and his classmates would have dashed into the belly of the only remaining legacy of the Catholic Church on the tiny island—the Fuveme RC Basic School—to seek refuge from the rains.

But not this time.

Not even its concrete walls can be traced. The sea, the vicious sea, brought it down and swallowed its debris.

“The sea had been inching closer and closer every year until 2016 when water began to enter the building, and eventually the walls broke down,” the headmaster, Cornelius Adzido, recalled. The incident caused the relocation of the school to about 500 metres away from its old site.

When this reporter visited Fuveme in 2016, the community was praying and hoping for a sea defence wall.

It was not built. The 2.8-kilometre Atorkor sea defence project was expected to cushion some coastal communities in the then Keta Municipality (now Anloga District) against destructive tidal waves. But the construction didn’t progress beyond Akplorwotorkor.

It meant Fuveme was left exposed. Over the years, the waves have pounded the village (Fuveme), causing extensive damage to property, including homes and churches, and sometimes cutting the inhabitants off from the rest of the district.

A large section of the fishing community has been reduced to a pile of rubble as the advancing tidal waves turbocharged by climate change continue to inch closer. It created a new estuary in May 2021.

According to experts, rising sea levels linked to the melting of polar ice caps is causing coastal erosion, which slowly submerges communities along the coast.

So, the Fuveme RC Basic School became a victim of an imperial ocean claiming territories. It is an occurrence climate change experts blame on human activities such as sand winning and deforestation as well as natural causes such as wind, water and other forces.

Five years ago, the school had trees around it. But as the sea moved closer, it mowed them down. As the situation got worse, the sea began to flood the compound and the classrooms with its debris. By August 2016, the classrooms collapsed, leaving teachers and students stranded.

Months after the old school disappeared under the ocean, the Anloga District Assembly and the community mobilised and built a new one.

But far from the relative beauty of the destroyed structure, the current one looks like a market shed. Overlooking the ocean, the new Fuveme RC Basic School stands like a helpless and desolate memorial awaiting another violent end.

The school has a population of more than 200 pupils. It is just a few metres away from the shore. Its management, teachers and pupils are constantly reminded of the danger creeping closer.

The headmaster, Cornelius Adzido, (right) of the school in a chat with The Fourth Estate journalist, Seth J. Bokpe. Behind the headmaster is the JHS classrooms and the sea Photo: Clement E. KumsaH

“The school is about 150 metres [from the sea]. I don’t know how it will happen in the future. The fear is that if it [the sea] takes this school away, there will be no school in this community,” the headmaster said of the predictable end of the school.

“The children will have to move far away to other places. The whole community will be deserted. Our prayer is for the school to be protected so that it can help the people in the community,” he added.

But there are other problems too.

Classrooms from Primary One to Six are windowless and the doors are made of palm fronds. They are empty except for a few desks scattered across and are complemented by kitchen stools and tables the pupils bring from home.

Coconut frond is the closest the school has to getting a door for its classrooms Photo: Clement E. Kumsah

However, another classroom has been packed with desks, awaiting the completion of a new school block, just behind the six-classroom block.

The floors in the primary classrooms are cemented, a luxury their senior counterparts in the junior high school (JSH) could only wish for.

The JHS classrooms were constructed from corrugated iron sheets and the floor is as bare as the seashore.

The JHS classrooms were built from iron sheets and the floors are bare. Photo: Clement E. Kumsah

A new classroom block is under construction, but the contractor was not at the site when The Fourth Estate visited the school in July.

A student who declined to give his name said the classroom could sometimes be extremely hot on sunny days and when the rain comes with a storm, school comes to a sudden end.

“When it is raining, our classroom is not protected from the rain. Rain enters it and gets us wet, so we close early,” he said.

The headmaster’s office is no different from the JHS block. Occasionally, domestic animals walk in and out of the office.

The headmaster’s refuse

But that is the least of the concerns of the headmaster. The school has even bigger problems that are undermining academic work.

“We are facing a lot of problems. We are also suffering from a furniture shortage. We don’t have any toilet facility in the school,” he said.

He added: “We have challenges with teachers. I don’t know whether they tag the school a deprived school that is why teachers are not coming. In the whole of the primary [section], we have only two teachers and in KG, we have only one teacher. The JHS form one to three, we have two teachers, so we have a staffing problem here,” Mr Adzido lamented.

The inadequate staff of the school had taken its toll on the school’s academic performance, he said.

While declining to go into the figures, he said Form Three students who wrote last year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (B.E.C.E.) flunked it.

“Formerly, the JHS pupils were doing well because the teachers were with them. Last year, they couldn’t perform well because they had only two teachers with them.”

The school, he added, had in the past produced students for some secondary schools in the Volta Region, including Keta Secondary Technical School, Anloga Senior High School and Sogakope Senior High School.

To find a solution to the situation at the Primary level, Mr Adzido said the classes had been combined. Primary One and Two pupils share the same classroom and teacher. So do their peers in Primary Three and Four, as well as those in Five and Six.

It’s Mathematics time Photo: Clement E. Kumsah

The Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) chairman of the school, Jacob Afetorgbor, who has spent almost his entire 41 years on the shrinking patch of land situated between the sea and the Keta lagoon, said the community was helpless.

According to him, the community had resettled at least four times since 1993 when visible signs of sea erosion began to take its toll on Fuveme.

“It is heart-breaking that nothing much has been done to stop the sea from taking over our land. The future of our children depends on their education, but we are not even sure if this structure will be here for another 10 years,” he said, clasping his hands around his neck.

Anloga District Assembly

When contacted, the Anloga District Coordinating Director, Emmanuel Dzakpasu, told The Fourth Estate that while the construction of a sea defence wall at Fuveme was beyond the financial muscle of the assembly, it was engaging the Ministry of Works and Housing for the minister to visit the area and assess the dangers facing such communities.

On the inadequate desks and teachers, he said the assembly would work with the district directorate of education to ensure that the packed desks were released to the pupils while efforts were made to assess the teacher needs of the school.

As conversations about the fate of the school go on, residents of Fuveme are anticipating that decision-makers will roll out their mitigation plan early enough to tame the ocean and save their land and school.

They can only hope.

October 14, 2021