A Committee set up by the Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko, and chaired by lawyer Philip Addison, have found out that the famed AMERI power deal for turbines which was allegedly inflated is quite likely a fraudulent deal.
The 17 member committee found that the Middle Eastern company had charged close to $150m as commission for the deal, and called on government to call AMERI back to the table for a renegotiation as the deal is ‘grossly unfair’ to Ghana.
Dr Kwabena Donkor tried so hard to hold onto his office despite promising to leave if he failed to solve the load shedding program, but in the end he had to give in.
After making the promise in February, he tried walking it back later, and then tried getting out of it altogether with a premature press release that the dumsor was over. That proved to be the last straw, and he was forced to resign on the last day of the year.
The Power Minister, Dr Kwabena Donkor, has resigned over the dumsor dumsor, as per his promise earlier this year.
Donkor made the promise in February, and whilst the ministry announced on Wednesday that the load shedding was over, that got contradicted by GRIDCo real quick, leading to the Minister being handed an ultimatum to resign or be fired.
Well, when I wrote the story on dumsor being over, I theorised that it would take at least a couple of weeks for the sh*t to hit the fan- but it actually took less than 24 hours.
On Wednesday December 30, government through the power minister announced that the four year running load shedding exercise was finally over. Dr Kwabena Donkor therefore ostensibly, had beaten the deadline of December 31 he put down to solve the dumsor or resign.
30th December 2015. Note this date down, because I’m pretty sure a couple of weeks into the new year, we’ll need to make reference to it.
The Ministry of Power has released a press statement, announcing the end to the erratic supply of power problem that has been plaguing this country for the past four years.
Dr Kwabena Donkor seems very confident in his efforts to solve the power crisis, efforts that he believes has earned him a reprieve from having to keep his promise to Ghanaians of resigning.
With only a few days before the end of 2015, and with the country still engulfed in the dumsor spirit, he’s been pushing very hard the narrative that he promised to solve load shedding but not dumsor.
Dr Kwabena Donkor is one hell of a ballsy minister. Of all the ministers, his portfolio has had the worst year, with the never ending power crisis. And of all the ministers, he is also the only one who has promised to resign by the end of they year if his sector’s issues are not fixed.
Yet, Honourable Dzifa Attivor has somehow lost her job, and Kwabena Donkor is set to have a job into the new year. It’s not because he fixed the dumsor, but because he is trying a trick of lexicon to wiggle out of his very clear promise.
A legal battle has commenced between the Africa Middle Eastern Resources Investment (AMERI) Group and the Norwegian newspaper, VG.
VG broke the story on the deal between AMERI and the Power Minister, which apparently inflated the price of the ten turbines from $220m to $590m. Another bone of contention was that the deal involved a man wanted for fraud in Norway.
The latest financial malfeasance scandal to hit this government is in relation to a power deal that saw Ghana being intentionally screwed over- possibly for the financial benefit of the few people involved in the deal.
The icing on the cake was the significant involvement of a known fraudster in facilitating the deal.
On Saturday it emerged that Ghana’s Power Minister had signed a deal for the supply of turbines to Ghana that not only involved a massively inflated price- but also a wanted fraudster.
Ghana signed a deal with the AMERI Group, of which a man wanted in Norway for fraud, Umar Farooq Zahoor, is a key member.
Often we cry out about the incessant corruption this country is buried in. We have scandals like those of Woyome and SADA, and we try to guess at the dealings going on behind the scenes and the money changing hands- but it’s so rare that such raw evidence is laid at the foot of Ghanaians to be so sickened at.
A Norwegian newspaper, Verdens Gang (VG), carried out an investigation into a deal involving getting turbines for easing Ghana’s power crisis, spearheaded by Power Minister Dr Kwabena Donkor. The investigation was commissioned because one of the people involved, Umar Farooq Zahoor of the Ameri Group; is a man wanted in Norway for fraud and organised crime.
At this point I can tell you Ghanaians are so jaded, we could be taken out of dumsor for the next five years, and we would still always feel a certain apprehension that its just around the corner.
That’s the sort of mental rewiring of our brains load shedding has left us with after the past few years. We are at the point where having electricity lasting past forty eight hours arouses suspicion.
And do we have to believe him? African politicians have never heard of resignation even if extensive pressure is mounted on them but according to Ghana’s Power Minister-Dr Kwabena Donkor, he will resign if the power crisis persists after 2015. What the Minister is doing is; he is asking Ghanaians to give him a … Read more
