The Fourth Estate in 2021 obtained data on Ghanaians who had received sponsorship for their education from the Scholarships Secretariat in the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 academic years.
In analysing the data, The Fourth Estate found that there were 972 scholarships funded by the Government of Ghana and that the Scholarships Secretariat disbursed the funds to beneficiaries who studied in countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia and Russia.
According to the Secretariat, it disbursed GHS237.5 million in 2019 and GHS200 million in 2020.
In the last few days, The Fourth Estate has been publishing series of reports highlighting some grave anomalies in Ghana’s scholarships system where, for example, a good chunk of available funding had gone to people connected to the political and social elite.
Scholarships beneficiaries
The Fourth Estate provides below the first part of the list of government of Ghana scholarships beneficiaries for the years 2019 and 2020:
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Gilbert Addo (not his real name) completed University of Cape Coast in 2019 and obtained a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 3.97 out of four— a super First Class.
With a burning desire to be an academic, he applied for a Master’s programme in the same university and secured admission. But his parents were too broke to pay his tuition fee.
Rich in grades but poor in finance, he turned to the state for support to fund his academic dream.
He applied to the Scholarships Secretariat for GHS4,000 (equivalent of £237 today) to support him to do his Masters.
He didn’t receive the funding.
Eventually, he used the same credentials to apply for a PhD Programme in an American university. On the basis of his academic record, he was given a full scholarship to pursue his PhD.
“It’s the same documents I used to apply for admission in UCC for Master’s. The same CGPA. Nothing new,” he told The Fourth Estate.
After receiving complaints from people like Gilbert and other frustrated applicants who applied for support from the Scholarships Secretariat in the past, The Fourth Estate asked in March 2021 for data on those who had been awarded scholarships in 2019 and 2020.
The focus was on those two years because an earlier audit covering 2009-2018 had found impropriety in Ghana Education Trust Fund’s (GETFund) administration of foreign scholarships after it usurped the work of the Scholarships Secretariat. That audit revealed how the political elite had unduly taken advantage of funding from the GETFund.
When we made the request, the Secretariat initially refused to grant us the information, claiming the data was confidential. But the Right to Information Commission ordered that personal information should be redacted and the data released. The Commission based its ruling on the premise that the scholarships were funded with public money.
The information was released on February 8, 2022 – almost a year after The Fourth Estate made the initial request. It showed that the Scholarships Secretariat had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively on both foreign and local scholarships.
The Scholarships Secretariat, an agency under the Office of the President, was established in 1960 with the primary purpose of providing scholarships to academically gifted but financially needy students. Following the country’s liberation from colonial rule, the Nkrumah administration set up scholarship programmes as a means to incentivise and attract top talents to bolster the nation’s workforce by assisting citizens who lacked the financial means to fund their education.
A major source of funding for the Scholarships Secretariat today is the GETFund. Section 2.2(b) of the GETFund Act requires the Scholarships Secretariat to allocate funds to support “gifted but needy students for studies in second cycle and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.”
The Scholarships Secretariat’s website states that its mission is to “utilise Government Funds, GETFund and donor support for the provision of scholarships to brilliant but needy students and qualified workers at a minimum access cost, for human resource development for the purpose of national growth and development.”
Gilbert Addo qualified for a scholarship. But he was denied funding. He didn’t get the GHC4,000 he needed, ostensibly because there wasn’t enough money to go round.
However, The Fourth Estate has found that the Scholarships Secretariat spent thousands of pounds on other students who applied for scholarships to study in foreign universities.
We found, for instance, that in the year Gilbert’s application for GHC4,000 was rejected, his peer from the University of Cape Coast, Vanessa Ampofoa Boadu, received GBP19,000 (the equivalent of GHS321,100 at the current exchange rate of 16.9 cedis) for her Master’s programme at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom (UK).
Another beneficiary, Patience Oware-Danso, received as stipend 10,236 euros (equivalent of GHS172,988.4 based on the current exchange rate 14.5 cedis) to study for an MA programme at the University of Cologne in Germany.
There was even more for Seiwaa Osei Afriyie. The Scholarships Secretariat considered the former student of one of the country’s most expensive private schools, Ghana International School needy enough to grant her GBP36,720 (GHS 620,000) in 2019 alone. This was for her to fund her first degree at the University of Warwick in the UK after enrolling in 2017.
By the time she completed her studies in 2020, there was a job waiting for her at no less place than the Office of the President. The Fourth Estate confirmed that Ms. Afriyie is a Policy Associate at the Sustainable Development Goals Advisory Unit at the presidency.
Courses are cheaper in Ghana
The data we received showed that a substantial portion of the programmes that the Scholarships Secretariat funded were offered by Ghanaian universities, with much lower fees which could help save money and ensure that more needy but brilliant students benefit from government scholarships.
According to the Secretariat’s data, a beneficiary, Mathias Abednego Bonir, received a total of 81,948.46 Canadian dollars (CAD) — the equivalent of GHS807,192 (based on today’s exchange rate of GHS9.85) for a post-graduate certificate in Project Management in 2019, as well as Human Resource Management in 2020. He attended the Georgian College in Canada.
The Secretariat spent CAD16,441.13 on his tuition in 2019 and CAD17,507.33 in 2020. He received CAD2,000 as stipend monthly in the course of his studies.
His stipend alone amounted to GHS19,700 monthly. This amount is more than sufficient to cover the full tuition (GHS17,696) for a Master of Science in Project Management at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).
Mr Bonir’s stipend could almost have covered the total fees (GHS20,423) for a Master of Science in Project Management at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
His total fees and stipend for the two programmes he pursued would have been adequate to cover the fees of 45 MSc Project Management students at UPSA and 39 at KNUST.
The Scholarships Secretariat spent funds on other programs that are available in several Ghanaian universities, including:
MSc Computer Science: GBP15,800
Masters of Law (LLM): GBP16,850
MSc Project Management: GBP17,550
MSc Accounting and Finance: GBP17,900
MSc Business Administration: CAD35,100
MSc in Marketing: GBP16,500
MSc in Banking and Finance: GBP 17,355
MSc in Information Technology: GBP 21,000
MA Communication Studies: USD16,130
MSc Management: GBP16,200
The Fourth Estate obtained comparative fees of some Ghanaian public universities in the 2023-2024 against the Scholarship Secretariat’s tuition fees.
Value for money
Prof. Peter Quartey, the Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana, raised questions about spending huge sums of money to pay for Ghanaians to take courses in foreign universities when those same courses are on offer locally.
Prof Quartey made a strong case for the Scholarships Secretariat to limit sponsorship of courses that are available in Ghana. That, he said would help ensure that scholarship funds are utilised in a more targeted and strategic manner.
Comparing Ghana’s scholarship system with that of China, Prof. Quartey said he had learnt that individuals funding their own education were not even allowed to apply for foreign transfers to pursue courses in areas the state has not prioritised.
“You cannot go and study literature or history, American history or British history and expect that the Chinese government will gladly allow you to fund and transfer hard-earned foreign exchange,” he said. “So, we need to be targeted in the way we sponsor people to attend schools outside the country. We must rethink the way we sponsor people to pursue courses with our tax money.”
Additionally, Prof Quartey highlighted the importance of directing funds towards critical areas of national human resource need.
“Our focus should be on the critical areas of our manpower needs.
“We need people in IT [Information Technology] and cyber security. That is where the need is. Artificial intelligence and medicine are areas that we need expertise [in].”
Roberta Nti (not her real name) thought she had it all figured out financially when she was awarded a scholarship to study for a Master’s Degree in the United Kingdom (UK).
She arrived at the university in London full of hope. The receipt of her first stipend of about 2,000 pounds from the Scholarship Secretariat helped her to settle in a bit. She was told she would be receiving more of such stipends every quarter. But that was it. The first was the last.
“I thought I was going to focus only on my studies, have my stipend regularly to take care of my needs, but now it’s hell,” Roberta said.
“The stress I had to endure before my fees were paid, it took the school shutting me out of their system and sending threatening messages to report me to the Home Office before the Scholarship Secretariat paid [my fees].”
Having paid her fees, the Scholarship Secretariat stopped providing for her living expenses in a city as expensive as London. With no stipends to cater for her needs, she started working as a cleaner, under what she described as “difficult conditions.”
She earned about 800 pounds per month from the cleaning job. But she spent much of this (680 pounds) on rent. She had to fall on remittances from her parents back home and loans from her friends to survive.
Now Roberta owes more than 5,000 pounds. As she struggles to pay off her debts, she is acutely aware that other government of Ghana scholarship beneficiaries in the UK have had it worse.
“A girl was nearly raped because she went living with a male friend because she didn’t have money to rent because the stipend was not coming,” she told The Fourth Estate.
“People are suffering. Students are depressed, some have been chased out of their accommodations and have been locked out of their school portals. But who is going to hear us?”
While Roberta and her peers continue to bear the mental torture of unpaid fees and stipends, The Fourth Estate has found that some of their compatriots received multiple scholarships from the Scholarship Secretariat.
After receiving numerous complaints from scholarship applicants, The Fourth Estate asked in March 2021 for data from the Scholarship Secretariat on those who had been awarded scholarships in 2019 and 2020.
The Secretariat initially refused to grant the request, claiming the data was confidential. But the Right to Information (RTI) Commission ordered that personal information should be redacted and the data released. The Commission based its ruling on the premise that the scholarships were funded with public money.
The Scholarship Secretariat’s response to the RTI request showed that it had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, on both foreign and local scholarships.
The Scholarship Secretariat, an agency under the Office of the President, was established in 1960 with the primary purpose of providing local and foreign scholarships to academically gifted but financially needy students. Following the country’s liberation from colonial rule, the Nkrumah administration set up scholarship programmes as a means to incentivise and attract top talents to bolster the nation’s workforce by assisting citizens who lacked the financial means to fund their education.
A major source of funding for the Scholarship Secretariat is the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund). Section 2.2(b) of the GETFund Act requires the Scholarship Secretariat to allocate funds to support “gifted but needy students for studies in second cycle and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.”
In recent years, however, the secretariat has been criticised for allegedly perpetuating a system of patronage, often overlooking deserving applicants in favour of those with political and high society connections.
For the underprivileged Ghanaians who do secure scholarships, many, like Roberta , are left stranded and frustrated in foreign lands. Unable to fend for themselves, they are often compelled to take on low-paying jobs to be able to fend for themselves as they abandon the courses they travelled abroad for.
The situation is, however, different for the privileged and well-connected. Their fees get paid on time and some even go on to secure more government of Ghana scholarships, while their underprivileged compatriots struggle – either for a first scholarship or for their tuition and stipends to be paid on time to enable them focus on their studies.
Multiple scholarships
The data we received from the Scholarship Secretariat showed that at least 17 people received multiple scholarships which allowed them to pursue different programmes in two consecutive years or in a single year.
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At least 10 individuals received multiple scholarships in consecutive years (2019 and 2020), with amounts ranging from GBP13,250 to GBP55,000 per school to cover tuition and living expenses. Seven others were granted two different scholarships within the same year, either in different countries or in the same country.
The Fourth Estate confirmed that a beneficiary, Sidney Osei-Owusu, for instance, received GBP28,330 in 2019 to cover his living expenses and tuition for an MSc degree in Management at the Brunel University in London. In 2020, the secretariat again paid GBP15,750 for his MBA in Business Administration at the University of the West of England.
Another beneficiary, Kieve Kuuku Kittoe, received USD38,475 for an MA in Design Management at Savanna College in the United States in 2019. The following year, Mr Kittoe also received GBP14,500 for an MA in Visual Communication at the University of Derby in the UK.
When The Fourth Estate pointed out concerns about double scholarships to some beneficiaries while other deserving applicants were denied, Dr Kingsley Agyemang, the Registrar of the Scholarship Secretariat, claimed that those who received the double scholarships pursued complementary courses. He insisted that the number of such double beneficiaries was insignificant.
Dr Agyemang also attributed some of the multiple scholarships to “administrative error” on the part of some staff of the secretariat who are accustomed to manual record-keeping.
However, Prof Peter Quartey, the Director of the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER) noted that such multiple awards could only be justified if they were for courses that could not be undertaken in Ghana or for specialties in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with stringent requirements for beneficiaries to return to the country to pass on their knowledge and skills.
Scholarship beneficiaries are not returning
Roberta Nti, who went to study in the UK on a government of Ghana scholarship, ended up fending for herself in the last one year. She remains in the UK, broke and in debt. She told The Fourth Estate that she cannot afford a plane ticket and so she has no immediate plans of returning to Ghana after graduating in January.
She hopes to get a post-study permit which would allow her to work and pay off debts before she thinks about what next to do with her life.
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“It is difficult for my parents. They have to change money from cedis to pounds in these difficult times. My mum is complaining about how difficult things are back home,” she said.
There are many Ghana government scholarship beneficiaries in several western nations like Roberta. It is hard to tell how many of them are refusing to return because of financial difficulties and how many have just decided that after using government support to gain some foothold in a developed country, Ghana is no longer good for them.
But from our data analysis, there are at least 104 government scholarship beneficiaries (from 2019 and 2020) who have not returned to Ghana after their studies abroad, although they had signed bonds to do so. Some of these beneficiaries have drifted from their fields of study into other areas of work.
Andrew Asafo-Agyei graduated from the University of Brunel in 2020 with an MA in International Relations. His education cost the Ghanaian taxpayer GBP29,030 in government scholarship funding. But he is now working in the United Kingdom as mental health officer.
With a GBP28,000 scholarship from the Scholarship Secretariat, Barima Kwame Adu Gyimah graduated from the University of Buckingham with a BA in Communications, Media, and Journalism in 2022. He currently serves as a retention sales executive in the UK.
Similarly, Michael Yiadom Adarkwa, who received GBP13,260 in state sponsorship and completed his studies at the Solent University in the UK in 2021, now works as an assistant residence manager. He has an MA in Public Relations and Multimedia Communications.
We also found that the Scholarship Secretariat does not have systems in place to ensure that beneficiaries return to Ghana.
Dr Agyemang told The Fourth Estate that while some of the beneficiaries had the blessings of the Secretariat because they had secured jobs which could give them valuable work experience, others simply have refused to return.
He admitted that enforcement is a major challenge but was quick to add that even those beneficiaries who have failed to return are contributing to the Ghanaian economy with their remittances.
However, Prof Quartey insists that there’s a way to compel beneficiaries to return as the rationale for awarding government scholarships is to train people to pass on their knowledge and skills to other Ghanaians.
He said the University of Ghana has a system which makes guarantors pay financial penalties for scholarship beneficiaries who fail to return home.
Dr Dennis Addo is by all indications an accomplished man. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Claron Hospital and co-founder of Bisa, an international award-winning health app.
His hospital, located on a quiet street in the affluent Airport Residential area in Accra, caters for some of the country’s elite with deep pockets.
He is apparently so good at what he does that he was appointed to the board of the National Health Insurance Authority from 2017-2020.
Dr Addo, by all indications, is not a poor man. He is not a man in need and he’s certainly not someone who is so desperate to further his education to boost his life chances.
Yet, when he decided to pursue a degree in Public Administration in Harvard University, it was the Ghana government, through its Scholarship Secretariat, that paid USD50,031 for his tuition and living expenses in the United States in 2019.
That money came from a fund meant to help needy, underprivileged Ghanaian students to further their education. But for his political connections and social privileges, it is hard to imagine how a man with Dr Addo’s credentials, not to mention wealth, could be classified as needy and eligible to access a government scholarship to the tune of USD50,031.
Dr Addo describes himself as a pioneer member of the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) students’ wing, TESCON. He recently contested in the NPP’s parliamentary primary at Atwima Nwabiagya South in the Ashanti Region but lost.
In addition to the government scholarship, Dr Addo was also awarded the Cheng Fellowship at Harvard in the course of his studies.
He did not respond to our email asking for comments.
While there is no explicit information on the financial benefits of Cheng Fellowship, Harvard University’s policy on fellows renumerations stipulates that “generally between $55,000 and $70,000” is paid “per year depending on experience and the nature of each Fellowship assignment.”
Dr Dennis Addo is the founder and CEO of the Claron Hospital in Accra. He received funding for his Masters in Public Administration in Harvard University Photo credit: LinkedIn.
For his studies at Harvard, therefore, Dr Addo had two streams of financial support – one from the Scholarship Secretariat and the other from Harvard University. He was there for two years.
The Fourth Estate has found that Dr Addo is one of many politically-connected and social elites who have been competing with some of the country’s poor but brilliant students for funding from the Scholarship Secretariat. We could not reach him for a response.
Easy funding for the politically-connected, frustration for the needy
Many ordinary Ghanaians who apply for assistance from the Scholarship Secretariat have told us that they face a monumental hurdle in the shape of protocol lists that make it next to impossible for them to receive the support they need.
They had to compete with politicians, their relatives and associates, as well as socialites and diplomats.
After receiving numerous complaints from scholarship applicants, The Fourth Estate asked in March 2021 for data from the Scholarship Secretariat on those who have been awarded scholarships in 2019 and 2020.
The secretariat initially refused to grant the request, claiming the data was confidential. But the Right to Information (RTI) Commission ordered that personal information should be redacted and the data released. The Commission based its ruling on the premise that the scholarships were funded with public money.
The Scholarship Secretariat’s response to the RTI request showed that it had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, covering both foreign and local scholarships.
The Scholarship Secretariat, an agency under the Office of the President, was established in 1960 with the primary purpose of providing local and foreign scholarships to academically gifted butfinancially needy students. Following the country’s liberation from colonial rule, the Nkrumah administration set up scholarship programmes as a means to incentivise and attract top talents to bolster the nation’s workforce by assisting citizens who lacked the financial means to fund their education.
In recent years, however, the secretariat has faced criticism for allegedly perpetuating patronage, often overlooking deserving applicants in favour of those with political and high society connections.
A major source of funding for the Scholarship Secretariat is GETFund. Section 2.2(b) of the GETFund Act requires the Scholarship Secretariat to allocate funds to support “gifted but needy students for studies in second cycle and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.”
In 2019-2020, the Scholarship Secretariat spent at least 291,480 pounds sterling (GBP), 146,502 US dollars (USD) and 7,685 Canadian dollars (CAD) on 20 influential individuals and the associates of the political elite.
The NSS Deputy Director, Gifty Oware-Mensah (nee Oware-Aboagye)
For example, Gifty Oware-Mensah (née Oware-Aboagye), obtained a government scholarship of GBP18,450 to study at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom in 2020 to pursue an MSc in Development Policy and Politics. She was awarded the scholarship three years after she started working for the National Service Secretariat as Deputy Executive Director. In the same year, she acquired Berry Ladies FC, a female football club formerly known as Halifax Ladies FC, currently playing in Ghana’s women premier league.
When The Fourth Estate reached out to her on January 19, 2024, she denied receiving any scholarship.
“From 2019, my name has been Gifty Oware-Mensah. Let me call Kingsley [Agyemang] and get back. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me speak to them and get back to you.”
She later sent a text message that she was driving to Sunyani and would revert. Subsequent calls to her did not yield result.
Fawzy Ramadan, a relative and personal assistant to Second Lady, Samira Bawumia, was awarded GBP17,355 to cover the cost of tuition for an MSc in Global Supply Chain Management at Brunel University in the UK. However, Mr Ramadan never pursued the course because he claimed he was involved in an accident during the peak of COVID-19 and could not defer the course. Neither he nor the state benefitted in any way from the tuition fee paid to the Brunel University on his behalf. He said the school later wrote to him demanding the cost of accommodation from him when he had not stepped a foot on the university’s campus.
Michael Ofori-Atta Jr is a relative of the former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta (right).
Then there is Michael Ofori-Atta Jr. The weight of political connections appears to have heavily favoured him, being a relative of President Nana Akufo-Addo and former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta. In 2020, the Scholarship Secretariat paid the University of Birmingham GBP16,740 for Michael to enroll in a programme called the Foundation Pathways – Social Sciences, Business and Law. The university describes the course as a “pathway that will lead its students into a number of possible undergraduate degrees” within its College of Arts and Law or College of Social Sciences.
We could not reach him for a response.
Celestina Amoako Atta
If social media posts extolling the virtues of the NPP and some of its big wigs count for anything, then they certainly did for Celestina Amoako Atta. The NPP youth activist was granted a GBP27,980 scholarship to study for an MSc in Information Business Management and Digital Business at the Coventry University in the UK in 2019.
Ms Amoako Atta is currently an Assistant Administrative Officer at the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).
When The Fourth Estate disclosed the reason for reaching out to her during a phone call, she claimed she could not hear anything being said. She did not respond to subsequent calls.
According to data provided by the Scholarship Secretariat, a leading member of the NPP, Nana Poku Frefre was awarded a GBP28,080 scholarship to study for an MSc in Strategic Studies and Energy Security at the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom in 2019. Mr Frefre, who is a founding member of the NPP branch in Scotland, told The Fourth Estate that although he got the Scholarship Secretariat award, he opted for a much better one from GETFund.
He is now the Head of New Media for the Ashanti Regional NPP Communication team and an aide to the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the NPP, Bernard Antwi-Bosiako, alias Chairman Wontumi.
Kelvin Ofori Gyimah joined the league of state-sponsored students in the UK in 2020 for a Master of laws (LLM) degree in International Human Rights Law at Brunel University at a cost of GBP17,355.
He is the current president of the NPP’s student wing (TESCON) in the UK.
Mr Gyimah is yet to respond to our requests for comment.
Amenyo Kwame Akoto is a Special Assistant to the then Member of Parliament for Mpohor, Alex Kofi Agyekum, received GBP17,355 for a Master’s programme in International Relations at the Brunel University in 2020. We could not reach him for comments.
If the curriculum vitae (CV) of Charles Asmah is anything to go by, then he was nowhere close to being a needy student when he received GBP28,380 for tuition and cost of living expenses during his studies for a Masters of Law degree in Legal Practice at the BPP University. At the time he secured the scholarship, his online resume showed that he was working as a finance and tax consultant at WhitePoplar UK Limited, and a lecturer at the College of Haringey also in the UK.
Mr Asmah is now a solicitor in the UK. Further checks showed that he has been living in the UK since 2008. He is also the NPP’s UK branch Treasurer.
He confirmed receiving the scholarship to The Fourth Estate. He, however, said he has been shuttling between the two countries. When The Fourth Estate asked if he was the Treasurer of the NPP in the UK, the line went mute, followed by shouts of “hello” from him, indicating he could not hear the question.
Just like Mr Asmah, Christine Ofosu-Ampadu has an impeccable resume. She is a private legal practitioner. She graduated with LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom and had a Bar Professional training education at Nottingham Trent University, also in the United Kingdom. She was called to the bar in New York in 2020. She worked as a crown prosecutor in the UK. With all these credentials she still needed USD6,570 from the Scholarship Secretariat to intern at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands in 2019.
Ms Ofosu-Ampadu confirmed in an email to The Fourth Estate that she received the funds for her internship.
Another lawyer, Amma Frimpomaa Dwumah, received USD12,200 for a certificate in programme Implementing Public Policy at Harvard University in the United States in 2019. Ms Dwumah was appointed Managing Director of SIC Saving and Loans in July 2017. Before that, she was a legal practitioner with Dery & Co, a law firm owned by the former Minister of Interior, Ambrose Dery. She contested and lost the Sunyani West NPP parliamentary election earlier this year.
The Fourth Estate reached out to Amma Frimpomaa through her official email address but received no response.
Away from the legal gown, Raphael Patrick Sarfo is among the few who opted for professional development courses the state paid for. He received GBP5,995 for a course in Strategic Human Resource: Aligning with Corporate Vision. The Ashanti Regional NPP Youth Organiser attended Crown Agents Training and Professional Development in the UK in 2019.
When The Fourth Estate reached Mr Sarfo, he said thousands of people had benefited from similar scholarships and that he was not accountable to The Fourth Estate.
Children of the political & social elite.
Former Inspector-General of Police, David Asante-Apeatu’s daughter, Nana Adubea Asante-Apeatu is one of the recipients.
In 2018, Nana Adubea Asante-Apeatu was in Ashesi University, one of Ghana’s most prestigious private universities, offering Computer Science. Ashesi is a distant dream for many Ghanaian parents because of its high fees and reputation for excellence. Many consider the university as the country’s version of an ivy league institution. The Computer Science programme at Ashesi cost GHS51,200 per semester now. But with a Ghana government scholarship, Nana Adubea, daughter of former Inspector-General of Police, David Asante-Apeatu, withdrew from Ashesi in 2019 and headed to the United Kingdom where she enrolled at the University of Aberdeen to study for a Bachelor of Law degree (with options in Computer Science). In 2019 alone, the state paid GBP27,480 for her tuition and living expenses.
Zina Asante (right) is the daughter of actress Juliet Asante who is now the CEO of the National Film Authority
In that same year, Zina Asante, daughter of actress and CEO of the National Film Authority, Juliet Asante, secured a place at Emmanuel College in the United States of America for a pre-medicine programme, costing USD41,026. The school described the course as “a launching pad towards a remarkable journey into the field of medicine.”
Zina was not the only beneficiary awarded a government scholarship to pursue a pre-med course. Nine others, including Araba Twumasi Mensah, the daughter of a former member of Parliament for Kwesimintim, Joe Mensah, also received funding for the same course. Miss Mensah took a pre-medicine course at the University of Oklahoma from 2019 to 2023. She got the scholarship at a time her father was a legislator. In 2019 alone, she received USD36,675 to cover her tuition and living expenses.
The reputation of a prominent politician and lawyer can effortlessly swing doors open for his children. It probably did for Adom Effah-Dartey, son of Captain Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey, a leading member of the NPP, a former MP and a former deputy minister of Interior in the Kufuor administration. In 2019, Adom was awarded a scholarship to study for a Bachelor of Law degree programme at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. The Scholarship Secretariat paid GBP19,130 for the course.
Lucie Blay Ekeleba is a practicing lawyer and a daughter of Freddie Blay, the board chairman of the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC), a former First Deputy Speaker of Parliament and until recently, the Chairman of the ruling NPP.
Her mother, Gina Blay, has been Ghana’s ambassador to Germany from 2017 to date. Her parents co-own the biggest private newspaper in Ghana—the Daily Guide. She received GBP5,933 to pursue a course that would qualify her to practice law in England and Wales. These funds went to the City University of London (GBP2,283) and Kaplan University College (GBP 3,650) in 2020.
Lucie Blay Ekeleba (middle) is a daughter of influential parents, Mr Freddie Blay, the Chairman of the Board of the GNPC and Ghana’s Ambassador to Germany, Gina Blay
Florence Akonor became Ghana’s High Commissioner to Malaysia in July 2022. Before then, she had received GBP4,037 for a programme known as the Executive Leadership in Action run by Crown Agents Training and Professional Development in the United States in 2020.
She is a career diplomat who has served in positions including head of chancery at the Ghana High Commission in India, Minister Counsellor at the Ghana Embassy in Ethiopia, Minister at the Ghana High Commissions in Canada and South Africa.
She confirmed that the Scholarship Secretariat sponsored the short course in the United States.
In the case of her peer in diplomacy, Mawutor N.K. Alifo, the state paid CAD7,685 for his Masters in Law programme at the University of Ottawa. Mr Alifo is a Foreign Service Officer who received the scholarship while in Canada. A year later, he acted as Ghana’s High Commissioner to Canada being the highest-ranking foreign service officer after the exit of the then High Commissioner, Nii Ayikoi Otoo.
Worthy investment?
The Scholarship Secretariat also invested 20,000 euros in a former Ashesi University student, Chelsea Naa Arday, to get a Master of Science degree in Luxury and Fashion Management at the Paris School of Business in 2019-2020. The beneficiary’s CV is not one that shows she is from a needy background.
Another 44,180 euros was spent on Innocentia Manza Norku, a former Systems Administrator at the Controller and Accountant General to pursue a Master’s in Food and Beverage Management at the College of Paris in France.
Discrepancies in criteria and guidelines
The GETFund Act, which makes funding available to the Scholarship Secretariat, explicitly stipulates that government scholarships are meant to support brilliant but needy Ghanaian students.
The Registrar of the Scholarship Secretariat, Dr Kingsley Agyemang, insists that this provision merely means that the primary criteria for receiving a scholarship are for the applicant to have a Ghanaian citizenship and an admission offer to a local or foreign university. The award of the scholarship has nothing to do with need, he claims.
While rejecting suggestions that scholarships are being wantonly awarded to those who are well-connected to the political and social elite, Dr Agyeman implied that recommendations from powerful persons and offices sometimes influence the award of scholarships.
I have journalists and the media making recommendations for people. I also do know that we have chiefs and the clergy making recommendations for people. I also do know that I have politicians on both sides also making recommendations for people they believe deserve an award, he said.
“We live in a society where we are somehow connected in so many ways and it becomes difficult when we want to separate these little interactions.”
Despite Mr Agyeman’s insistence on the existence of selection guidelines, the Scholarship Secretariat failed to provide any document with such guidelines to The Fourth Estate. Repeated calls and Whatsapp messages requesting for the guidelines went unanswered.
Dr Clement Apaak, the deputy minority spokesperson on education, insists that using any criteria other than “brilliant but needy” to award scholarships, defeats the purpose of setting up the Scholarship Secretariat.
Dr Clement Apaak, MP for Builsa South
“When we bring in exclusive groups as being conduits through which scholarships can be given, then we are subjecting the process to abuse,” he said.
Prof Peter Quartey, the Director of Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), agreed with Dr Apaak and noted that relying on recommendations to assess need is not good enough.
“For the politically-exposed people, they are Ghanaians. They pay taxes. They should meet the minimum standards that are set and they should all be part of the process,” he said.
“If we have an independent committee or board that assesses every application, they will all be given equal opportunity. When politically-exposed persons want to apply, they can apply – except when there is influence and they are the ones who benefit most.”
Prof Peter Quartey, Director ISSER, University of Ghana
Dr Apaak, however, insists that influential or politically exposed persons and their close relatives should not be eligible to apply for government scholarships.
He asserted that it was not for nothing that tax laws are designed to positively discriminate in favour of the poor and added that the needy also deserve their fair share of opportunities offered by the state.
He described the offering of scholarship to influential people, children of the affluent and their associates as a form of greed. This, he said, has the tendency to widen the inequality gap between the rich and the poor in society.
“It is in their own interest not to continue to be greedy and selfish, where they can afford to educate their wards and yet they choose to let their wards benefit from scholarship that should be going to the wards of the less fortunate in society,” Dr Apaak said.
“Society ought to be designed in a way that [we] would always sacrifice collectively to bring up those who are down.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story shall not be republished or broadcast, in part or in full, in any form or shape without the express permission of the Editor-in-Chief.
Watch out for part three of this story…
You can reach the writers via email at [email protected] and amedekudede@ gmail.com.
She was born to a farmer and a petty trader. Money was always hard to come by. However, her disadvantaged background was no hindrance to her quest for academic excellence. After obtaining an undergraduate degree with First-Class honours, Franklina Mensah (not her real name) knew better than to rest on her laurels.
The next step on her academic journey required funding she was well aware her parents could not afford. But with her stellar academic achievements, she was hopeful that support would not be difficult to come by. At least that was what Franklina thought when she submitted her application to the government-run Scholarship Secretariat, seeking funding for a master’s degree programme in the United Kingdom (UK).
If the scholarship was going to be awarded on merit, she felt she stood a very good chance. Her sense of optimism soared higher when she received plaudits from the interview panel, who were full of praise for her excellent proposal and academic credentials.
But optimism gradually fizzled into heartbreak.
Several weeks had gone by since the interview. She should be preparing to travel to the UK to start her new academic journey. But she hadn’t heard from the Scholarship Secretariat. She was getting anxious and the only way to ease her anxiety was to go to the Secretariat to find out what could be causing the delay. Maybe some clerical or administrative error was to blame. At the offices of the Scholarship Secretariat, Franklina met an official whose name she couldn’t recall. What ensued left her stunned.
“I mentioned my name, and he said, ‘Your name was on the list but there is so much protocol they had to take people out.’”
The official claimed requests come from highly influential offices including that of the President, Parliament and ministers “for this same scholarship.”
“You should understand that people will have to go off the list,” he told Frankina.
In other words, she had been shortlisted for the scholarship but a protocol list from some higher office or authority had forced her name to be taken off the shortlist.
“I was dumbfounded,” Franklina told The Fourth Estate.
As luck would have it, however, or perhaps as a testament to her perseverance and the quality of her graduate proposal, she obtained a different scholarship which enabled her to pursue her studies that same year – and in the UK as planned.
Franklina’s story is just an example of how what is supposed to be a merit-based scholarship scheme to help brilliant but needy Ghanaians achieve their academic dreams has gradually and cruelly been rigged in favour of those who are connected to the political elite.
Both Getfund and Ghana Scholarship Secretariat are not for the poor and needy rather for the rich and who you know inside there….You can apply everywhere for 5 good years and never be selected even with the necessary qualifications
After hearing numerous complaints from people like Franklina, The Fourth Estate asked in March 2021 for data from the Scholarship Secretariat on those who have been awarded scholarships in 2019 and 2020.
The secretariat initially refused to grant the request, claiming the data was confidential. But the Right to Information (RTI) Commission ordered that personal information should be redacted and the data released. The Commission based its ruling on the premise that the scholarships were funded with public money.
The Scholarship Secretariat’s response to the RTI request showed that it had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, covering both foreign and local scholarships.
The Scholarship Secretariat provided these booklets instead of the PDF-format data we requested.
The Scholarship Secretariat, an agency under the Office of the President, was established in 1960 with the primary purpose of providing local and foreign scholarships to academically gifted but financially needy students. Following the country’s liberation from colonial rule, the Nkrumah administration set up scholarship programmes as a means to incentivise and attract top talents to bolster the nation’s workforce by assisting citizens who lacked the financial means to fund their education.
In recent years, however, the secretariat has faced criticism for allegedly perpetuating patronage, often overlooking deserving applicants in favour of those with political and high society connections.
A major source of funding for the Scholarship Secretariat is GETFund. Section 2.2(b) of the GETFund Act requires the Scholarship Secretariat to allocate funds to support “gifted but needy students for studies in second cycle and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.”
The Secretariat administers bilateral scholarships, funded by foreign countries, and non-bilateral scholarships, which are financed by the Ghanaian taxpayer. Non-bilateral scholarships include funding for both local and foreign categories.
Scholarship for the well-connected and not-so needy
The Fourth Estate asked for data covering 2019-2020 because the Auditor-General had released a report (covering 2009-2018) in which it highlighted how deserving but financially disadvantaged students were sidelined, while scholarships were granted to the well-connected.
Our investigations revealed a similar trend—the funneling of scholarship funds to influential people as well as children, relatives and associates of powerful figures.
The Fourth Estate conducted an analysis of the data specifically focusing on scholarships funded by the government of Ghana. This analysis included a breakdown of the expenditures on scholarship recipients in various countries, details of the programmes pursued by the beneficiaries and their backgrounds.
From our analysis, in 2019-2020, the Scholarship Secretariat spent at least 291,480 pounds sterling (GBP), 146,502 US dollars (USD) and 7,685 Canadian dollars (CAD) respectively on influential individuals and the associates of the political elite.
Notably, the founder and chief executive of a private hospital in Accra who recently contested and lost in the NPP parliamentary primaries in the Ashanti Region received USD50,031 for his master’s in public administration at Harvard University in the United States.
An NPP constituency executive from the Eastern Region was awarded multiple scholarships for master’s programmes, totaling GBP57,210.
An NPP youth activists and a management member of the National Service Scheme (NSS) funded her Master’s degree studies with a scholarship award worth GBP18,450.
One of the most worrying details from the information we received concerned a special assistant to Second Lady, Samira Bawumia. GBP17,355 was paid for the special assistant to attend a university in the United Kingdom but he never stepped on campus and dropped out of the programme after attending only a few online classes from Ghana.
There is also the case of the fam,ily member of President Nana Akufo-Addo and former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta whose path to law school in the United Kingdom (UK) was cleared with a GBP16,740 scholarship.
A UK branch executive of the NPP, who has been living in that country since 2008, also received GBP28,380 for a Master’s Programme in Law.
Two top diplomats are also on the list of beneficiaries of a scholarship meant to empower the underprivileged, according to information on the Scholarship Secretariat’s own website.
Children of the political & social elite
The data revealed that it wasn’t just the politically connected who obtain government scholarships. Children of Ghana’s political and social elite also received scholarships, leveraging influence and privilege to access educational opportunities intended for brilliant but needy Ghanaians.
For example, the daughter of a former Inspector-General of Police received GBP27,480 for a first-degree programme in the UK.
In that same year, the daughter of prominent actress received USD41,026 for a pre-medicine programme in the United States.
The children of two former Members of Parliament received GBP19,130 and USD36,675 for a first degree in law and a pre-medicine programme respectively.
The daughter of a former national chairman of the NPP, who is a lawyer, got funding of almost GBP6,000 to qualify to practice as a lawyer in England and Wales.
The identities of these beneficiaries would be revealed in subsequent publications.
Multiple scholarships
Data from the Scholarship Secretariat showed that at least 26 people received multiple scholarships which allowed them to pursue different programmes in two consecutive years or different programmes in a single year. This means while some needy students were struggling to secure a scholarship to fund one programme, others received funding for two different programmes.
At least 11 individuals received multiple scholarships in consecutive years (2019 and 2020), with amounts ranging from GBP13,250 to GBP55,000 per school to cover tuition and living expenses. Six others were granted two different scholarships within the same year, either in different countries or in the same country.
The Fourth Estate confirmed that one beneficiary received GBP28,330 in 2019 to cover his living expenses and tuition for an MSc degree Management at the Brunel University in London. In 2020, the state again paid GBP15,750 for his MBA in Business Administration at the University of the West of England.
Another beneficiary received USD38,475 for an MA in Design Management at Savanna College in the United States in 2019. In the following year, the same person received GBP14,500 for an MA in Visual Communication at the University of Derby in the UK.
Discrepancies in criteria and guidelines
The GETFund Act, which makes funding available to the Scholarship Secretariat, explicitly stipulates that government scholarships are meant to support brilliant but needy Ghanaian students.
The Registrar of the Scholarship Secretariat, Dr Kingsley Agyemang, insists that this provision merely means that the primary criteria for receiving a scholarship are for the applicant to have a Ghanaian citizenship and an admission offer to a local or foreign university. The award of the scholarship has nothing to do with need, he claims.
While rejecting suggestions that scholarships are being wantonly awarded to those who are well-connected to the political and social elite, Dr Agyeman implied that recommendations from powerful persons and offices sometimes influence the award of scholarships.
I have journalists and the media making recommendations for people. I also do know that we have chiefs and the clergy making recommendations for people. I also do know that I have politicians on both sides also making recommendations for people they believe deserve an award, he said.
“We live in a society where we are somehow connected in so many ways and it becomes difficult when we want to separate these little interactions.”
Despite Mr Agyeman’s insistence on the existence of selection guidelines, the Scholarship Secretariat failed to provide any document with such guidelines to The Fourth Estate. Repeated calls and Whatsapp messages requesting for the guidelines went unanswered.
Dr Clement Apaak, the deputy minority spokesperson on education, insists that using any criteria other than “brilliant but needy” to award scholarships, defeats the purpose of setting up the Scholarship Secretariat.
Dr Clement Apaak, MP for Builsa South
“When we bring in exclusive groups as being conduits through which scholarships can be given, then we are subjecting the process to abuse,” he said.
Prof Peter Quartey, the Director of Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), agreed with Dr Apaak and noted that relying on recommendations to assess need is not good enough.
“For the politically-exposed people, they are Ghanaians. They pay taxes. They should meet the minimum standards that are set and they should all be part of the process,” he said.
“If we have an independent committee or board that assesses every application, they will all be given equal opportunity. When politically-exposed persons want to apply, they can apply – except when there is influence and they are the ones who benefit most.”
Dr Apaak, however, insists that influential or politically exposed persons and their close relatives should not be eligible to apply for government scholarships.
He asserted that it was not for nothing that tax laws are designed to positively discriminate in favour of the poor and added that the needy also deserve their fair share of opportunities offered by the state.
He described the offering of scholarship to influential people, children of the affluent and their associates as a form of greed. This, he said, has the tendency to widen the inequality gap between the rich and the poor in society.
“It is in their own interest not to continue to be greedy and selfish, where they can afford to educate their wards and yet they choose to let their wards benefit from scholarship that should be going to the wards of the less fortunate in society,” Dr Apaak said.
“Society ought to be designed in a way that [we] would always sacrifice collectively to bring up those who are down.”
Multiple scholarships
When The Fourth Estate pointed out concerns about double scholarships to some beneficiaries while other deserving applicants were rejected, Dr Agyemang claimed that those who received the double scholarships pursued complementary courses. He insisted that the number of such double beneficiaries was insignificant.
Dr Agyemang also attributed some of the multiple scholarships to “administrative error” on the part of some staff of the secretariat who are accustomed to manual record-keeping.
However, Prof Quartey of ISSER noted that such multiple awards could only be justified if they were for courses that could not be undertaken in Ghana or for specialties in science, technology, engineering and technology, with stringent requirements for beneficiaries to return to the country to pass on their knowledge and skills.
Prof Peter Quartey, the Director of ISSER.
Dr Apaak, on the other hand, described the multiple scholarship awards as unfortunate as they showed the insensitivity of the Scholarship Secretariat.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story shall not be republished or broadcast, in part or in full, in any form or shape without the express permission of the Editor-in-Chief.
Watch out for part two of this story…
You can reach the writer via email at [email protected] and amedekudede@ gmail.com.
Ghana’s second most powerful man last Wednesday joined the ranks of the ubiquitous conductors on our commercial buses—trotro— to sell himself to Ghanaians ahead of election 2024.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the Oxford-trained economist literally joined the league of the ‘aplanke,’ the Ga word for the men and women, also known as mates, who control affairs on trotro while the driver focuses on the wheel.
“As Vice President I am like a driver’s mate. But if, by the Grace of God, you make me President, I will be in the driver’s seat with constitutionally mandated authority to pursue my vision and my priorities,” he told cheering New Patriotic Party (NPP) members and supporters in Accra.
The strategy was ostensibly to purge himself off the sins of the Akufo-Addo administration.
Facing a referendum on December 7 on the tenure of the administration in which he was more than Akufo-Addo’s cheerleader, Dr Bawumia’s use of the allegory of a mate and the spin he gave it makes it a political concert with a borrowed chorus from dancehall artist, Shaggy’s hit song, “It wasn’t me”.
Music reviewers say Shaggy claimed that the message behind the evergreen song more than two decades ago had been misunderstood for years. It is exactly the way I felt about Dr Bawumia’s aplanke analogy.
The aplanke analogy
I am no economic expert, but I have an expertise in the work of mates. Until seven years ago, trotros run my mobility. This was before I bought my first car, a Toyota Corolla that had seen better days, and defiantly left me in the middle of the road on a number of occasions.
So, I’m well versed in the work of the trotro mate. It varies but there are certain things that remain constant. In every trotro, the mate has the responsibility to collect fares, ensure passengers receive change and keep law and order in the bus. However, it is not uncommon for some mates to contribute to the chaos on board.
Mates are also in charge of filling vehicles with passengers. They strategically know where to direct the driver to stop and load passengers. A bad mate could end up with an empty car. A careless mate could cause the driver to lose money and ultimately result in the driver not being able to fulfill his financial obligation to the car owner. The driver could end up borrowing to even buy fuel for the next day’s journey.
With my experience as a driver now and trotro passenger, good trotro mates don’t limit themselves to financial sustainability, they also ensure the safety of the vehicle and passengers. I can’t count the number of times they used body language to help the driver switch lanes. The notorious ones even help drivers reverse on highways.
These roles are akin to that of Dr Bawumia’s responsibility as the head of the economic management team. He is the government’s chief economic advisor which meant that he was supposed to ensure the economy is healthy and not as ailing as it is now.
In collecting the fares, mates ensure that the balance sheet of the vehicle is kept clean for the driver to pay for fuel and the daily sales that must go to the car owner, and on good days collect enough to make his boss happy. On the campaign trail, Dr Bawumia made us believe that as a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, he knew where to find money and that we needn’t borrow. But in office, Dr Bawumia the able mate supervised perhaps the biggest borrowing spree in the history of Ghana. How does he a mate who promised to ensure that the driver doesn’t go borrowing end up with so much debt that even the passengers are unable to get their change when the debtors came calling?
In their effort to hoodwink us into believing the infallibility of Dr Bawumia, his handlers have told us, albeit subtly that the finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, is overbearing and more powerful than the vice-president. However, the latter’s posturing and utterances over the years until the crisis kicked in did not depict someone who was playing second fiddle in an administration in which he was supposed to be the economic guru.
As he attempts to deflect his contribution to the economic mess while taking credit for the dividends of digitalisation,Dr Bawumia forgot that he is the driver’s mate who posed 170 questions to the mate who previously handled affairs in the same car some years ago.
Hello friends, please how many of the 170 statements and claims on the true state of the economy did the Vice President answer today?
It appears karma has been on steroid with our eloquent Veep whose 170 questions followed the late Vice-President Paa Kwesi Amissah Arthur to the grave.
And if a driver works with a mate with a greedy appetite for stashing cash away unnoticed or insatiable appetite for snacks, the trotro’s account suffers as the national economy would do if we had a corrupt Vice-President. But Dr Bawumia has been off the corruption index—an admirable quality in the midst of looting happening in this administration.
But being incorruptible isn’t enough. After all, President Akufo-Addo had that image in 2016. There are question marks on the Vice-President’s delivery. It’s disingenuous for him to watch Ghanaian hemorrhage financially under heavy taxes especially when he had needled the Mahama administration about the draconian taxes only to quadruple it under the guise of dealing with the aftereffects of COVID-19 and the Russian Ukraine. Covid-19 levy is still on goods and services almost two years after the disease was declared over as a pandemic. E-levy has become an albatross, oil prices are surging. Our air is polluted more than ever, although we’re paying 10 pesewas on every liter of fuel to improve air quality and sanitation.
On the log of terribly managed polices are Planting for Food and Jobs, One District, One Factory, One Constituency, USD 1million and to some extent free senior high school. Our debt has ballooned beyond our means while the economy run on treasury bills for the first time in our history.
Thousands of Ghanaian investors including myself are still waiting for our locked-up funds from a financial-sector clean up that was laced more with political malice than economic scruples. We’ve been made financially bald by ruthless haircuts that the president promised would never happen.
Dr Bawumia, who is now taking cover under digitalisation, told us on Wednesday that he is a man of solutions. One wonders why he has not found the antidote to curtail the billions of state funds that disappear in the name of corruption only to appear on the grim pages of the Auditor-General’s report?
In all these, our ‘aplanke’ veep believes that he was merely a mate whose solid economic management team was merely an advisory body that counted for nothing. There is a lot wrong with the veep attempt to sanitise his image while we are neck deep in a crisis that he contributed to.
Members of Ghana’s Economic Management team in President Akufo-Addo’s first term
Credibility deficit?
In an attempt to battle and contain widespread disillusionment with his performance in the role, Dr Bawumia is further damaging his standing. In the last four years that the economy has been on backfoot, the Vice-President has struggled to seize the initiative on issues that give the average Ghanaian migraine—the cost of living, taxes, lost investments among others.
Dr Bawumia wants us to believe that in 11 months to come, e-levy, sports betting among other taxes won’t be necessary. He also wants us to believe that he could grant tax amnesty and wave off taxes under an International Monetary Fund programme that requires that we spend less and collect more taxes to pay off our debts.
In the midst of an economic crisis, Dr Bawumia’s bid for the presidency carries with it the weight of accountability and leadership. However, his reluctance to accept responsibility for the economic turmoil, despite heading the economic management team, casts doubt on his credibility. By distancing himself from his role in steering the nation’s economy, he reveals a lack of accountability and leadership integrity, which undermines public trust. This evasion of responsibility not only reflects poorly on his appeal but also raises questions about his capability to navigate the country through future challenges.
As a voter, I see his reluctance to own up to his role in the economic downturn as a sign of weakness and opportunism rather than genuine concern for the nation’s welfare.
Moreover, the Vice-President’s refusal to acknowledge his part in the economic crisis highlights a disconnect between his actions and the reality we face as citizens. His attempt to shift blame onto others within the economic management team may further erode public confidence in his ability to lead effectively.
As I scroll through social media post, the question that keeps running through most of the post is whether Dr Bawumia has the foresight and competence to address complex economic issues if he cannot even acknowledge his own role in creating or exacerbating them.
Some mates graduate to become drivers after understudying their boss and occasionally drive the car as spare drivers. How do we trust Dr Bawumia the mate and spare driver who learnt driving from a boss that has a passion for the reverse gear? With the driver always forced to borrow money to maintain the car while telling the car owner fairy tales, how do we entrust our car into the hands of this mate who handled the car’s finances.
Can we trust him not to sleep on the job just as he did as a mate?
A private citizen and four chiefs of Ada have filed two separate lawsuits seeking an injunction to stop Electrochem Ghana Limited from mining salt at Ada in the Greater Accra Region.
Noble Wadzah, a former Chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) and Nene Amartey Korley, Chief of Aminapah and three other chiefs, also want the High Court to, among other reliefs, declare the lease granted Electrochem illegal.
Joined to the legal action are the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA), Minerals Commission and the Ada East District Assembly.
The plaintiffs’ case is anchored on the grounds that the Electrochem deal was in gross violation of PNDC Law 287 and the Master Plan for the development of the salt industry in the Ada area. They are also claiming that the lease is an affront to the rights of indigenes who have lived within the Songhor Salt enclave for centuries.
They also accused Electrochem of violating some terms of the lease agreement.
PIAC former Chairman’s case
In his suit filed before an Accra High Court, Mr Wadzah said the legal action was prompted by a letter from the district assembly directing salt miners on the Ada Songhor Lagoon site to vacate by December 31, 2023.
He wants a judicial review of the lease agreement and a declaration by the court that the Electrochem lease is illegal, particularly when the company’s obligations in the lease do not conform with PNDCL 287 and the Master Plan.
Mr Wadzah argues that Electrochem was required by the lease agreement to pay GHS2.3 million, which is 10% of the offer price of the lease as a deposit by August 31, 2021.
Court documents show that it was not until September 7, 2021, that Mr Daniel McKorley, Executive Chairman of the McDan Group wrote to the branch manager of ADB Head Office, to request the transfer of the said amount to SIGA to make the deposit on behalf of Electrochem, which is a subsidiary of the McDan Group.
Mr Wadzah also argues in his lawsuit, failure to make the deposit by the agreed date meant that Electrochem was in breach of the lease agreement.
Further, Mr Wadzah stated that President Nana Akufo-Addo, who holds the Songhor Lagoon salt deposits in trust for the owners, must ensure that the salt is mined, and the salt industry developed in compliance with PNDC Law 287.
President Nana Akufo-Addo was at the commissioning of the Electrochem Project in August last year
He said a cursory look at Electrochem’s business plan showed that it had no plans to operate with the master plan for the area but rather to completely marginalise and eliminate small-scale mining at the lagoon site.
“The Interested Party’s [Electrochem] acts of impunity have been fueled by the failure of the second and third respondents [Minerals Commission and SIGA] to ensure that the lease granted to the Interested Party and the divestiture respectively were granted in accordance with the law,” he added.
Chiefs’ suit
The case of the four chiefs is that they and their community stand to suffer greater hardship and irreparable damage if the Minerals Commission, the Ada East Assembly and Electrochem are not restrained from their lands until the final determination of the case.
In their case filed before the Tema High Court on January 17, 2024, the chiefs claim that the government knew that the Terkpebiawe clan owned the Songhor Lagoon.
According to the chiefs, although they had responded to a notice published by the Minerals Commission, indicating that their lives could be affected by the lease, the government failed to consult the principal members of the Terkpebiawe Clan but went ahead to grant the lease to Electrochem on October 29, 2020.
Artisanal salt miners at Ada say they’ve mined the commodity in the Songhor lagoon for centuries but are being ejected because of Electrochem
Our villages fall within the concession area and the indigenes of the villages have put up properties in the said areas. The properties in these villages include houses, schools, churches and other structures put up by the indigenes for the commercial activities, they said.
The chiefs noted that although the Ada East District Assembly knew of the concession granted Electrochem, it kept issuing business permits to indigenes to win salt. The permits gave the indigenes the green-light to put up structures and buy machines to facilitate their salt-winning activities.
“The defendants are aware of the fact that Parliament is re-examining the agreement between the State and the third defendant [Electrochem] but the defendants continue to intimidate and oppress the indigenes with the sole purpose of getting them out of their land even though they have not put in place any plan of resettling them,” the plaintiffs said.
Citing an example of the harassmenttheir communities were suffering, the chiefs said on December 14, 2023, the district assembly “ordered all persons occupying the lands within concession area to vacate the land for the third defendant [Electrochem].”
Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) says The Fourth Estate’s investigative reports on the SML and Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) contracts has courted extreme publish backlash against the company to the extent that former President John Dramani has promised he would terminate the deal if elected president.
The company in its legal action against the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) said The Fourth Estate’s reportage had evoked among the public feelings of hatred and outrage against it, as well as a lot of reputational damage.
SML said the reportage “has also resulted in public reactions and backlash, which had further hurt, marred and damaged the reputation of the plaintiff in the eyes of Ghanaians, causing distrust and a lack of confidence in the plaintiff’s operations in the petroleum sector.”
SML claimed in court documents that although The Fourth Estate had published its rejoinders which rebutted earlier publications against it, The Fourth Estate continued to use words such as ‘shady’ and ‘questionable’ without any evidence in its subsequent publications.
The company, therefore, wants the court to slap the MFWA with GHS 10 million in damages for what it said were the sins of The Fourth Estate, the accountability journalism project of the MFWA.
The plaintiff also wants the court to grant a gagging order to restrain The Fourth Estate from publishing “any further defamatory material” about SML, as well as retraction and apology from The Fourth Estate.
This is the second time SML is suing about The Fourth Estate’s stories. The company took legal action against The Fourth Estate in February 2024 following the release of the investigative report.
The report raised questions about the circumstances surrounding the signing of the contract and its rationale as the services SML was contracted to provide were already being performed by other state agencies.
In that suit, SML was demanding the same chain of reliefs including GHS10 million damages, a retraction and apology.
However, the court last month dismissed the case because The Fourth Estate is not a registered entity but rather a project of the MFWA which could not sue nor be sued.
SML indicated to the court that it would amend its suit to replace The Fourth Estate with MFWA.
It did.
Background
After The Fourth Estate released its investigations in December last year, President Nana
Akufo-Addo in January 2024 directed audit firm, KPMG, to audit the GRA/SML deal, following The Fourth Estate’s exposé on the revenue assurance contract.
As contained in a statement released by the office of the President, the KPMG audit report revealed, among others, that despite initial disapproval from the Public Procurement Authority, the GRA went ahead to sign a contract with SML.
“On three occasions, the GRA sought approval from PPA to use the single source procurement method to engage SML to provide transaction audit services. PPA did not grant approval,” the presidency said in a statement on April 24, 2024, almost four months after The Fourth Estate’s exposé.
As the clock ticks towards the end of 2023, it is time to reflect on stories that defined the year for The Fourth Estate. From exposing a quack midwife who is responsible for the death of babies and the maiming of others to the shedding of light on corruption in the school placement system through to the discovery of a questionable contract in the downstream oil sector that is stashing millions of dollars into the bank account of an offshoot of a timber company, The Fourth Estate has been at the forefront of accountability and critical journalism that made impacts.
Join us in revisiting the most impactful headlines that got public officeholders to act.
The GH₵ 3 billion lie
With a few days for the sun to set on the year, The Fourth Estate released The GHC3 billion lie: Government pays hundreds of millions to company in a shady deal— a-year long investigation— that revealed how the Ministry of Finance awarded a questionable contract to Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML), a company with no history of revenue assurance to track the operations of the downstream petroleum sector. This is a job the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the National Petroleum Authority are already doing.
Ever since the two-part investigation was released SML and the GRA have been falling over each other to defend the deal which has triggered a national uproar.
The Fourth Estate in September released a bombshell that shook the media and herbal medicine industry in Ghana. Through Dangerous endorsements: Exposé on herbal medicine advertising in Ghana, we sought media and regulatory accountability by revealing how the media bypassed advertising regulations to advertise a herbal medicine that was not approved by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA). The story also revealed a rather lax regulatory environment, which exposed the FDA and the Traditional Medicine Practice Council (TMPC) for sleeping on their job. Flowing from the story, the Ministry of Health promised a probe into the affairs of the TMPC to find its staff who issued licenses without due diligence. The FDA took a cue from the health ministry’s pledge, and also vowed to clamp down on media advertisement of unapproved drugs.
Quack midwife
Medical negligence is a malaise the Ghanaian healthcare system seems unable to cure. In most instances it is qualified health professionals who are accused of not living up to their professional responsibilities, leading to fatalities or injuries.
Many more are out there, still operating illegally.
1D1F hotel
Do hotels qualify to be designated as factories? May be their kitchens produce enough food to take on the title of a factory. In August, The Fourth Estate unveiled a rather cunning way 4-Mac Limited, a Ghanaian company, received almost $4 million in tax exemptions after it was designated as 1D1F entity. The 1D1F is the government’s ambitious industrialisation policy to motivate the private sector to set up at least one factory in all 261 districts in the country. The story caught the attention the Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament and Member of Parliament for Obuasi East, Kwaku Kwarteng, who initially apologised for what he described as an embarrassing error only to turn around and issue three rejoinders.
Asset declaration law
Leaders of parliament who had not declared their assets
Asset declaration law
There were no rejoinders from Parliament when The Fourth Estate put its spotlight on public officeholders who have not declared their assets and liabilities in compliance with Article 286 of the 1992 Constitution. Rather, there was a scramble for compliance as lawmakers, judges, ministers, metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives rushed to meet the constitutional obligation. A spillover from last year’s asset declaration series, The Fourth Estate found that 294 political appointees rushed to declare assets following the publications.
The New Generation Medical Centre has compensated two victims of its medical negligence, after an 18-month investigation by The Fourth Estate revealed the death of at least two children and the maiming of others.
The Fourth Estate’s sources say two of the victims, who asked to be known only as Kate and Bernice during the investigations, received GHC50,000 each from the hospital following their ordeal at the hands of a quack midwife, Francisca Quaye. The two had threatened legal action against the South Odorkor-based health facility.
But before the threat developed into a full-blown legal battle, the hospital opted for settlement.
Kate’s baby died at the New Generation Medical Centre but was told that the baby had been taken to the Neonatal Care Unit at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital. Bernice had a crude episiotomy performed by none other than a quack midwife, Francisca Quaye, alias Matron Gaga. About a week after the medical procedure, her vagina emitted an unpleasant odour, which led her mother to discover that a pad had been left inside her.
An episiotomy is a cut (incision) through the area between the vaginal opening and the anus. This procedure is done to make the vaginal opening larger for childbirth.
Both Bernice and Kate said they are psychologically scarred by their experiences at the hospital.
Prior to the compensation payout to Kate and Bernice, the New Generation Medical Centre paid a fine of GHC80,000 for employing the services of the quack midwife, Francisca Quaye, who had been in the service of the health facility for almost 30 years. A second hospital which employed Ms Quaye after she was sacked from New Generation Medical Centre was fined GHC25,000.
The Health Facilities Regulatory Agency (HeFRA) said the number of deaths, cases of injury, and other incidents, the use of an unqualified staff to provide service in a licensed facility for nearly 30 years informed the decision to impose the heaviest fine ever in the agency’s history on the two facilities.
HeFRA’s Registrar, Dr Philip Bannor, said the fine imposed on the New Generation Medical Centre was the highest penalty ever slapped on a facility for flouting HeFRA’s regulations. He explained that management of the two facilities looked on while the quack midwife practised, without any checks, with preventable deaths recorded at the New Generation Medical Centre.
HeFRA’s position affirmed Dr Ralph Obeng Owusu Snr, the Chief Executive Officer of the New Generation Medical Centre’s confession to The Fourth Estate that he could have handled the situation better.
“It was probably a little bit of naivety on my part…But the thing with her was she was a little boisterous when it came to things of that nature,” Dr Obeng told The Fourth Estate. “…Partly, I’ll take the blame because she had been under my tutelage for quite a while.”
The Fourth Estate’s investigations revealed that at least two babies died within 11 months due to the negligence of Ms Quaye.
The New Generation Medical Centre, however, concealed the two deaths recorded at the facility, as it told the Greater Accra Regional Health Directorate that it did not record a single death, be it a mother or a child from 2016 to 2021.
Thequack midwife, who is currently on the run, had practised for more than 30 years.
The President of the Midwives Association of Ghana, Mary Ofosu, condemned Ms Quaye’s unconventional and incompetent actions, including inducing pregnant women and asking them to go home, while she worked at the New Generation Medical Centre. She said the practice was inconsistent with midwifery practice.
“A midwife cannot do induction on her own,” she said. “There must be a medical officer or specialist around. You should also have a theatre around because induction can fail. So, when you induce and it fails, we need to take the client to the theatre. So, before you do induction, you need to get all those things around.”
The Fourth Estate’s investigations revealed that Ms Quaye had never been to any nursing or midwifery training school.
To be recognised as a midwife in Ghana, one has to attend an accredited nursing/midwifery training institution and pass a licensing exam conducted by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (N&MC), renewable annually. Any exemption to this rule may only be granted by the board of the N&MC.
Ms Quaye had neither a license nor an exemption. She was a janitor at the now-defunct Susan Clinic, where she met Dr Obeng, who did little to stop her from working in his labour ward.
Unannounced inspections by HeFRA
Until The Fourth Estate’s exposé, HeFRA was required to announce schedules for its visits to health facilities for inspections.
However, Agyeman Badu, HeFRA’s Director of Compliance and Enforcement, told The Fourth Estate that the two healthcare facilities had lost that privilege as the agency’s inspectors would now visit the facilities for six months until it was satisfied with their level of compliance.
Similarly, he said HeFRA had decided to pay unannounced visits to all registered healthcare facilities nationwide as part of measures to curtail the ingenious ways some facilities hid their unscrupulous activities.
He observed that the gaping loopholes in HeFRA’s monitoring system had been reviewed and that mechanisms for monitoring health facilities in the country had been enhanced.
“Relative to this particular story, [The Fourth Estate’s Quack Midwife Series], we have decided that it shouldn’t always be the case that we are prompted.
“So, we have stepped up our monitoring activities across the regions such that even facilities that have been licensed also fall in line, to make sure that the conditions for which they are licensed are not varied, which will affect patients’ safety,” he said.
