Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama has challenged the government to publish the audit report of cocoa roads.
The Mahama administration was accused of awarding over 230 road contracts to the tune of GHS3.5 billion under the cocoa road project to the detriment of COCOBOD’s finances.
The New Patriotic Party government, therefore, halted the construction of the cocoa roads across the country in 2017 over corruption concerns.
Speaking at Bopa as part of his tour of the Western North Region, the former President dared the government to produce the said report adding that the government has deliberately started reconstructing the roads few months to the election for political gains.
“They abandoned the projects because of sabotage and politics. Because they realized we are close to elections, they have started work on the roads again. I want to know where the audit report is. I am here at Bopa asking the NPP government to publish the audit reports on cocoa roads for everyone to see.”
“The laws of Ghana indicate that if a government starts a project and loses the elections, it is incumbent on the next government to continue with the projects. But this is not what we are seeing. When the NDC was voted out of power, there were a lot of contractors working on projects, but when this government took over, they halted all of them, saying it was auditing them. It has been four years now and I believe that even if it was the Bible we were reading, we would have covered from Genesis to Revelations by now,” he added.
Mahama said he believes the NDC will be voted back into power in December 2020 to complete the projects they started.
“NDC started the projects and I know by the Grace of God, we will come back and complete such projects.”
Audit report on cocoa roads will be published at ‘appropriate time’- Osafo Maafo
Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo when asked on Citi Breakfast Show in November 2019 about the whereabouts of the report on the audit of cocoa roads commissioned by the Akufo-Addo administration said it will be published at the “appropriate time,”
He assured that the government is “not hiding the audit report”.
The Akufo-Addo administration suspended work on cocoa road projects in 2017 for an audit, following corruption concerns.
