The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), has hinted of taking legal action the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to unravel the mystery behind the 170 million judgement debt against Ghana.
The policy think tank believes sueing Mr Godfred Dame responsible for “wilfully causing financial loss to the State, for negligence and a breach of his fiduciary responsibility” will be ASEPA’s next move to make leaders accountable to the people of Ghana.
Ghana is to pay a 170 million dollar judgment debt to power contractor Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) following a rule London Commercial Court of international arbitration over termination of contract.
The Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Godfred Dame, has defended why his outfit, under the leadership of Gloria Akuffo, advised then Minister of Energy to terminate the Power Purchasing Agreement signed between the erstwhile NDC government and Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC).
But ASEPA believes it amounts to negligence of duty from the Govement of Ghana.
In a statement issued The Executive Director of Mensah Thompson, Asepa said no amount of propagand n amount of diversionary propaganda and blame game can absolve Godfred Dame and his team at the AG’s department from this $170million judgement debt.
Read full statement below
Folks, we are currently witnessing a story of two fathers, father A and B who took turns to cater for a sick mal-nourished child.
Father A who first took care of the baby out of fear for the baby’s life, entered into several arrangements with a food distributor to supply the baby with constant supply of food items.
After a while, when the child was recovering he felt that not all the food distribution arrangements he made earlier were needed due to an improvement in the baby’s health so he decided to review some of the arrangements.
In the process of reviewing those arrangements, he had an emergency and had to travel, so he handed over the baby and the existing arrangements to father B.
Father B upon taking over the baby decides to totally cancel the food distribution arrangements without recourse to the terms of arrangements entered into by father A who initiated those arrangements.
Long story short, now the baby is dead out of starvation.
Folks that is not even the real tragedy of this story, the real tragedy of this story is that now father B is going around blaming father A for the death of the child and his excuse is that father A ordered too much food for the child.
Folks if this not madness then I don’t know what else is.
The point is, No amount of diversionary propaganda and blame game can absolve Godfred Dame and his team at the AG’s department from this $170million judgement debt and here’s why….
1. The judgement did not accrue directly as a result of the review of the Power Purchase Agreement..No!!
2.There were clear cut recommendations made by the review committee on the processes for the termination of the contract and Government’s obligation after the consensus termination.
3.The unitalateral termination of the contract in 2018 without recourse to the recommendations of the review committee was solely the decision of the current Government which Godfred Dame was Deputy AG.
4.The decision to snub the $23million payoff demand by GPGC which could have saved Ghana from arbitration and its resultant judgement debt was solely the decision of this Government.
5.The decision to enter into arbitration and challenge the claims of GPGC was also another decision that was solely taken by this Government without the involvement of any member of the previous Government.
6.The failure to file for a review after the judgement within the stipulated timeframe was also solely the responsibility of this Government.
This review if nothing at all could have led to a significant reduction of the damages the Court awarded to GPGC if the Attorney General had put up a spirited defense just as he is going around doing in the media now.
And so this is a classical case of a cocktail of arrogance, negligence and disrespect for contract obligations that has landed the Country into this judgement debt albatross and this was not caused by anyone other than the current Government.
In view of this we are considering a public interest private legal action against the current AG, for wilfully causing financial loss to the State, for negligence and a breach of his fiduciary responsibility to the State as a Public officer.
Mensah Thompson
Executive Director, ASEPA
