A leading Ghanaian civil society advocate, Bright Simons, has voiced concerns about President Akufo-Addo’s white paper on the KPMG audit report on the contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilization Limited (SML).
In a statement posted on X[formerly Twitter], the honorary Vice President of IMANI said that, while it is refreshing for the president to admit to a lack of due diligence in awarding the contract and the need for additional needs assessment for such contracts, the contract fee in question should be fixed.
“It is helpful that the President of Ghana accepts that infractions occurred in the award of the SML contracts and that substantial work must be done to determine the country’s needs before the award of any such contract for revenue assurance. We also accept, but only in principle, that a fixed fee makes more sense in a contract like this,” he stated.
Read Also: Akufo-Addo Terminates GRA’s Upstream Petroleum and Minerals Audit Contract with SML after KPMG Audit
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Additionally, Simons deems it wrong to attribute every fuel increment to SML and insists that the official KPMG report be made public through an open forum for clarity.
“However, we insist on seeing the full KPMG report. We dispute their claim that any increase in petroleum consumption should be attributed to SML. We demand an open forum to show that the weight of expert opinion in Ghana is against any such claim,” he added.
He also assured the president that, multiple experts are willing to offer their services free of charge to thoroughly conduct the needs assessment before SML or any other company is paid.
“The needs assessment mentioned by the President must be concluded before SML or any other company receives a pesewa more of Ghana’s money. We have lined up a long line of specialists willing to support a value for money & needs assessment pro bono,” he indicated.
Simons further throws a challenge to the president to gracefully accept requests from CSOs regarding the urgent need to make the audit report public. According to him, Ghana should not spend any more money on the SML contract until due diligence is done.
“We are challenging the President to accept this patriotic offer. Not one pesewa more of Ghana’s money should go to SML or any company until such an open, transparent, rigorous, and meritocratic process has been done,” he concluded.
Read the Full Statement here:
