The wheels of justice, they say, grind slowly and the noose is gradually tightening around the neck of Clement Kofi Humado, Member of Parliament for Anlo Constituency in the Volta Region and Minister of Agriculture as the Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice prepares to haul him before the law Courts to answers questions on his involvement in the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) rot.
Information available to Scandal indicates that, Mr. Kofi Humado, a former Youth and Sports Minister will this week be processed for court to join a former GYEEDA national Coordinator, Abuga Pele and Philip Akpene Assibit, CEO of Goodwill International Group who are both standing trial.
According to a grapevine source, “he (Kofi Humado) would have been on trial alongside the two others (Pele and Bassit) but because of his peculiar situation as a Minister and a Member of Parliament, the government had to be tactful in order not to stray into any legal quicksand”.
According to the source, although some people as sitting Members of Parliament have been put on trial and some even jailed, “it has not happened under this Fourth Republic that a Cabinet Minister and an MP is put on trial by the government”.
The Prosecutors, according to the source, have built their case but it is left with the President to give the green light for the prosecution of Mr. Humado to commence.
“The Presidency has decided to get to the root of this GYEEDA rot and so we are hoping that he will be in the dock this week”, the source reiterated.
“As a Minister of State with supervisory functions, it would not be out of place for him to have his day in Court to justify why he approved some of the contracts”.
Indeed Mr. Abuga Pele, MP for Chiana Paga and who is standing trial on eight counts is on record to have stated that he could not have sanctioned some of the contracts in dispute since the amount involved were way above his limit to approve.
Mr Pele had initially lamented of attempts to use him as a scapegoat even before his prosecution started two weeks ago. Speaking on various media outlets, Mr. Abuga Pele opined that “People make it look like I am corrupt. They have judged and condemned me”.
Adding that “I will be shocked if they sacrifice me…I have worked so hard for this party (National Democratic Congress, NDC) while in opposition…I have sacrificed for this party. So why would they use me as a scapegoat?
“I have done nothing wrong for them to sacrifice me. What I know is that, Ghanaians are calling for the truth; they are not calling for a sacrificial lamb.”
Before this statement, Mr Abuga had stated on a number of networks that “I have heard that they want to use me to cleanse the system, so if they sacrifice me, everybody would believe that the government is indeed fighting corruption.”
It would be recalled that, nineteen new criminal charges were last week slapped against Abuga Pele and the CEO of Goodwill International Group (GIG), Philip Akpene Assibit.
While the first accused, Mr. Assibit is contending with eleven charges including defrauding by false pretences and dishonestly causing financial loss to public property, the second accused, Mr. Pele, is facing 8 charges, which includes intentionally misapplying state resources by authorising payments to Goodwill International Group as well as willfully causing financial loss to the state.
According to the Daily Graphic “an interesting dimension to the GH¢4.1 million GYEEDA rot trial emerged Wednesday when, Mr Raymond Bagnabu, counsel for one of the accused persons, produced documents that sought to absolve his client from any wrongdoing.
The state has accused a representative of Goodwill International Ghana (GIG), Philip Akpeena Assibit, of putting in false claims that he had secured a $65-million World Bank funding for the creation of one million jobs for the youth, that claim resulting in the government parting with GH¢4.1 million.
But at the sitting of the Financial Division of the Fast Track High Court in Accra, counsel for Assibit, Mr Bagnabu, brought out documents which revealed that two government officials had, indeed, publicly acknowledged that the World Bank had given $65-million support to the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) to create employment for the youth.
Counsel specifically cited Mr. Clement Humado, as holding a press conference in 2011, in his capacity as then Minister of Youth and Sports to announce the said $65-million support from the World Bank”.
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