Skip to main content

NCA case: Change in Fortunes

"As a human being, I would naturally be upset."
That is perhaps the most striking admission made by the lady selected as first prosecution witness in the case of causing financial loss against four employees of the National Communications Authority in connection with a 4 million dollars contract signed with Israeli firm IDL.

The four are immediate past Board Chairman of the NCA Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie, it's immediate past Director General William Tevie and two former Board members.

Also standing trial is a private individual George Derek Oppong who is a Director of IDL.
Abena Kwarkoa Asafu-Adjei is the Director, Legal Administration and Special duty at the NCA and has already testified for two days.

Also included in Mrs. Asafu-Adjei's portfolio at the NCA is oversight of Procurement and Board Secretary.

Until the 2017 change in government, Mrs Asafu-Adjei had been reassigned from her role as Head of Legal.

The decision to reassign her was communicated in a letter handed her after returning from a mandatory 8 months accumulated leave ordered by the now beleaguered former Director General.

She was ordered to embark on the leave in July 2015 only to return and be told she is no more in charge of the legal department; a position she has held since 2003.

Lest I forget, before losing her position as Director, legal, Mrs Asafu-Adjei lost another position as Board Secretary in 2011.

Fast track to 2017 and Mrs Asafu-Adjei had regained all she has lost  in 5 years and more.

Aside that, she is now testifying in a case that could further worsen the plight of four men under whose watch she lost her coveted position of Director, Legal at the NCA.

Mrs Asafu-Adjei admitted after strenuous resistance under cross examination that she was unhappy when she was asked to proceed on leave.

The man cross examining her is Tadius Sory who is lawyer for Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie.

During a heated session, Abena Kwarkoa Asafu-Adjei told the court that she was shocked at the decision to ask her to proceed on leave because at the time she was being forced to go on the prolonged leave there were other colleagues who had accumulated more leave days than her.

A visibly unhappy Mrs Asafu-Adjei told the court "I couldn't be bothered" when Tadius Sory asked whether she confronted the former Board Chairman about the decision if she felt it was unfair.

Mrs Asafu-Adjei however refuted any suggestion of bitterness towards either the former NCA Board Chair or the immediate past Director General.

Pointing to Mr. Baffoe-Bonnie, Mrs Asafu-Adjei stated "he is my good friend and he can't deny it."
This is despite accepting that she was she was "unhappy" with the decision.

Under the law, public servants can only accumulate up to 2 months of leave.

When pressed on how come she had accumulated leave days that are in clear violation of this provision, Mrs Asafu-Adjei said some of the leave days were accumulated at a time when she was the only lawyer at the NCA and the workload was such that she could not have gone on leave.

She said she was sometimes called back from her leave.

It was however unclear how much of the said leave period was accumulated during the period in question but it is clear that not all of it was accumulated during the period under review.

Even though Mrs Asafu-Adjei admitted the situation that she testified to has long changed, she didn't take the accumulated leave before she was compelled to.

When Tadius Sory sought to know whether NCA Director Legal Administration ever advised against the situation where she and some of her colleagues were allowed to accumulate leave days more than allowed under the law; she said she couldn't advise because she was on leave.

To be continued
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sandy and Gibeleen's task; Improving sickle cell care

Two sisters Sandy Ayivor and Gibeleen Amponsah Ninpong are hoping to change the face of sickle cell care in the country within five years. This they hope to do through their GNS (Gibeleen & Sandy) Foundation. Ghana’s foremost sickle cell clinic is a one block facility comparable to the ones used as clinics in villages. The most worrying aspect is that the same facility is supposed to be the Ghana Institute of Clinical Genetics. The Institute is supposed to be the leading center for diagnosis and care for persons suffering from genetic conditions or ones inherited. Even though the Institute has some of the best brains in clinical genetics running and working in the facility, they have been reduced to providing only sickle cell care. A former Director of the Institute Dr. Edeghonghon Olayemi says the GNS Foundation first contacted the clinic and demanded to know the challenges of the company. He revealed that a list of the challenges confronting the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volivo Bridge: Mahama's unfinished business and cost of delay

In the 2025 Mid-Year Budget Review, Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson declared, "We aim to ensure that all the priority projects are completed and commissioned by the end of 2028." Number one on that list was the construction of a new bridge across the Volta River at Volivo. The priority projects in question are ones for which funding had been secured but had neither been completed nor started before Ghana defaulted on the payments of its debts and began moves to restructure these debts in 2022. "Mr Speaker, following Ghana’s default on its external debt service obligation on 19 December 2022, creditors halted disbursements of 55 bilateral projects. This resulted in several uncompleted projects scattered across the country and left a massive amount of US$3 billion in undisbursed loans," Cassiel Ato Forson clarified in the Mid-Year Budget Review. In the wake of an agreement being reached with its official creditors on debts owed, there was the need t...
Post a Comment
Read more

SC to determine fate of "unexecuted" but "ratified" US-Ghana agreement

Barely three days after its ratification under controversial circumstances, the Defense Cooperation agreement between the Governments of the United States and Ghana is facing its first constitutional test. The agreement is the subject is a suit filed by Ashanti Regional Youth organizer of the National Democratic Congress Yaw Brogya Gyamfi. The government led by the Minister of Defence Dominic Nittiwul successfully pushed the agreement through parliament with the overwhelming support of all New patriotic Party MPs despite concerns over its constitutionality. The Minority led by its leader Haruna Iddrisu had questioned the suitability of the agreement for a parliamentary approval because it has not been duly signed and therefore does not meet the constitutional requirement of execution in order for it to be ratified. Article 75(2) which gives Parliament the authority to ratify agreements entered into by the executive reads; A treaty, agreement or convention executed by...
1 comment
Read more