Mr. Agyenim Boateng Adjei, the man at the center of the PPA (Public Procurement Authority) contract controversy, is a known quantity.
Evidence? In 2003, while at the PPA, he gained notoriety for causing the state a colossal financial loss of 72.5 million cedis. The feckless Mr. Adjei was summarily dismissed by the John Kufour administration.
He slithered into political obscurity and stayed off the public radar until his career was resurrected by President Nana Akuffo Addo who conveniently glossed over Mr. Adjei’s past transgressions and elevated him to the top post at the PPA.
Back on his old stomping grounds, Mr. Adjei reigned supreme, breaching established procurement regulations and abrogating to himself the sole authority to issue contracts.
In other words, the incorrigible Mr. Adjei once again, unfathomably indulged in the same shenanigans that led to his previous ouster but which, this time, were explicitly captured on video.
For his latest egregious behavior, Mr. Adjei got a slap on the wrist, in the form of a suspension by the President and a referral to the CHRAJ for investigation — and lo and behold, a summons from the office of the Special Prosecutor to answer some pertinent questions.
How outrageous! Mr. Adjei should have been given his marching orders —- dismissed without any reservations even as he awaits his ultimate fate —- a long prison sentence.
By failing to deal sternly with Mr. Adjei from the outset, the President missed the opportunity to reclaim lost ground — to restore public confidence in his ability to tackle corruption at its core and crucially, to shed the unsavory image of him as a toothless enforcer of anti-corruption laws.
His detractors derisively label him the “Clearing Agent in Chief,” a not so subtle reference to Mr. Addo’s penchant to look the other way as his officials pillage state resources.
This was the tipping point for Mr. Addo; time for a paradigm shift, indeed, a chance to declare his disgust with and abhorrence of the corrupt and shady ways of his appointees and of his keen desire to crack the whip as it were.
But his response was half-hearted, tepid and not aggressively robust enough to send an unambiguous message to similarly minded Mr. Adjeis lurking in state agencies around the country ready to gorge on our scant finances.
Let it be proclaimed emphatically that conditions in Ghana today, official corruption particularly, induce discontent and widespread pessimism verging on despair.
Be that as it may, the onus now is on Mr. Addo to lift us out of the funk, the depression. But does he have the spine to pull it off.
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