John Boadu is General Secretary of the NPP
General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party, John Boadu, has challenged former President John Dramani Mahama to break his silence on the Sibton Switch deal which his government approved but which was subsequently abrogated under the current government.
A 2016 contract awarded to Sibton Switch Limited to implement the Master Agreement for the Ghana Retail Payment Systems Infrastructure by the Bank of Ghana, BoG, was abrogated by the new BoG board in 2017.
Subsequently, the company dragged BoG to the London International Court of Arbitration (LCIA) over the termination. The case was determined last month with Sibton Switch ordered to pay $478 million to the Bank of Ghana.
According to John Boadu, even though he has raised the deal as part of the corruption that took place under Mahama, the National Democratic Congress and the former president have failed to comment on the matter.
Boadu, during a press conference of September 7, 2021, also accused Mahama of turning judgment debt payment into a cottage industry whiles mismanaging the economy and handing over a battered economy that the current government is still fixing.
“If you remember, I raised the issue of the Sibton Switch deal the last time we met. Strangely enough, they’ve held press conferences upon press conferences, he (Mahama) has been speaking on a daily basis, curiously he has never touched on one of the most gargantuan frauds that was going to be perpetrated on the people of this country.
He continued: “And I must say that it beats our imagination that a programme that we cancelled, a contract that was given to Sibton Switch Limited costing 1.2 billion dollars, we cancelled the contract, we used only 4.2 million dollars to execute the contract to perfection.”
The NPP scribe went further to accuse the then government of awarding a contract that far exceeded the amount of money that they went to the IMF for during the economic crisis they superintended over.
“This amount that president Mahama signed with this company was more than the total amount of money his government went to IMF for relief. They were only looking for 918 million dollars but they had signed in excess of 1.12 billion dollars in excess of what the contract was about.
He said it was the IMF conditionalities at the time that led to a policy of non-recruitment in the sector creating so much unemployment that the Unemployment Graduates Association was formed. “If they had managed the economy well, there would have been no need to run to the IMF for policy credibility,” he added.