The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), has explained that the fertilizer supply contract at the centre of the lawsuit involving a former Ghana COCOBOD Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Stephen Opuni, and Seidu Agongo of Agricult Ghana Limited, a subsidiary of the Zeera Group of Companies, had been terminated before the legal action.
COOBOD said the decision was taken because among other things, it found out that the contract did not go through due process.
Seidu Agongo, together with Dr. Stephen Opuni, the immediate past CEO of COCOBOD, were on Wednesday charged by the Attorney General for causing financial loss to the state to a tune of over GHc200 million.
[contextly_sidebar id=”3iNQublx90s3qJkK0ER0L0fhZA1FD0H9″]Speaking to Citi News, the Manager in Charge of the COCOBOD CEO’s office, Fiifi Boafo, said although some of the contracts entered into with other companies by the previous government were honoured, several others too were abrogated.
“It’s an input supply contract that was awarded to the company and the new management reviewed it. There were some problems with those contracts; it is not just limited to this particular one that is barely before court; there are other contracts that had been awarded by the previous administration which have also been abrogated.”
He said the current administration abrogated such contracts because “they were of view that there were some problems leading to the award so management decided to abrogate some of those contracts.”
Fiifi Boafo also noted that, not all the contracts were found to be problematic, adding that those found to be faultless “were honoured” by his boss.
Opuni, Agongo and Agricult sued
The contract at the centre of the lawsuit spanned the period 2013 to 2016. The defendants are expected to make their first appearance in court on 20th March, 2018, where they will be answering twenty seven charges in all, including abetment of crime, defrauding by false pretence and willfully causing financial loss to the state, among others.
Opuni’s prosecution a case of ‘injustice’ – Kofi Adams
Meanwhile, the National Organizer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Adams, has described the prosecution of Dr. Opuni’ as a case of “selective injustice.”
According to him, the government is only making frantic efforts to cause public disaffection towards the previous administration.
“What has government done about numerous corruption and acts of corruption reported sometimes by its own members against itself since January 2017, meanwhile they will be spending resources, wasting everybody’s time looking for non-existing evidence in an attempt to paint the previous administration bad. We can’t sit aloof and say that they are prosecuting, when it is clear that they are engaging in selective injustice,” he said in a Citi News interview.
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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin