This is a tale so outlandishly bizarre that it has the makings of a future movie script or at the very least a short docuseries detailing Ms Cecelia Dapaah’s journey from Ghana’s minister for sanitation and water resources to scrambling to stay out of the slammer.
The full details of the story are still being examined and almost every day a new plot twist in this meandering saga, comes to light.
Typically, a good story is made up of good guys, a villain, a dilemma and a solution. This unusual saga, however, features many characters, but the hero is yet to emerge, and it’s also not clear whether there is a truly blameless victim in all of this.
Based solely on the sums of money involved in this unbelievable situation, it seems safe to assume that there is an innocent party who is out of pocket somewhere. Nonetheless, not a single protagonist can be said to be free of scoundrel status.
Before the discussion goes any further into the wild goose chase involving Ms Dapaah, it’s worth doing a pit stop tour of the main events that have unfolded so far, just to be sure we are all on the same page in terms of the facts. The table below outlines the timeline of key events and includes links to the relevant news stories in case you too would like to delve down the very intriguing rabbit hole.
6 October 2022, Ms Dapaah’s husband allegedly arrived home to discover a member of the couple’s domestic staff in the couple’s bedroom (it is believed that both of the domestic staff in their employment were involved). This prompted Ms Dapaah and her husband to check their belongings, they then discovered that items and sums of money were missing.
10 October 2022, Ms Dapaah and her husband apparently reported the theft to the police who in turn passed the case to the juvenile court and some charges were brought against her domestic staff. However, the charges were not as severe as the later charges which were pursued and strangely information about this report was omitted from the information the police handed over to the attorney general.
7 months later – May 2023, unclear what exactly prompted the second interaction with the police on this matter, but it seems Cecilia then filed another police report, this time specifying the items and amounts of money believed to have been stolen. The report stated that cash sums of 1 million US dollars, 300,000 Euros and 350,000 Ghana Cedis had been stolen as well as other items including handbags valued at $35,000 and jewellery worth $95,000.
22 July 2023, Ms Dapaah resigned from her post as minister for sanitation and water resources, but it was too little too late, since the nation was shocked and appalled at the fact that a government minister had been hoarding such astronomical sums of money in her bedroom.
24 July, she was arrested on suspicion of corruption. She has since been released on bail but the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s (OPS) investigation remains ongoing.
July 2023 By way of explanation of where she obtained such large sums of money, Madam Cecilia stated that $800k of the stolen 1 million dollars belonged to her late brother. Her sister-in-law, promptly launched a motion in court to retrieve the money which has been alleged to belong to her deceased husband.
Timeline of key events in Cecilia Dapaah’s alleged corruption case
Bearing in mind that the events, which have been set out above are just some of the things that have taken place, the one thing that is clear to everyone is that there is a lot to unpack. People have a lot to say on the matter, and clearly, I feel the same, since I am writing about it. Of course, we all want an answer to the two most obvious questions, first, where did the money come from and secondly, why was it not being kept in a bank account or at the very least a safe deposit box (admittedly, depending on the answer to that first question, the second one may be moot)?
Whilst I wait with bated breath to discover how this messy drama will conclude, I have been struck by some of the comments made by the more minor characters. The sentiments of the spectators are also worth touching on.
President Akufo -Addo stated that he was confident that the investigation would establish her integrity whilst in office. Anti-corruption campaigners have found this disappointing since they claim that this pre-judges the outcome of any investigation. This seems unfair since he will not be handling the investigation himself and is merely expressing a view on her character, which let’s face it, he probably only shared at a push because everyone was expecting him to say something.
Then there is Maurice Ampaw’s view, which is that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) should show solidarity to its fallen soldier, Ms Cecilia Dapaah, because when Gyake Quayson, an MP from the opposition party (National Democratic Congress (NDC)) got into his own scrape with the law, his party had his back. Besides this, he argues that she has not broken any laws.
This, it seems to me, is a particularly misguided view, to argue that because one group of people show unwavering support for a member of their group (in very different circumstances), means that another must do the same, fails to take account of individuals’ consciences. Surely support should be based on one’s own moral code rather than group think. As for the question of whether she has broken any laws, it is unfortunate that we are unable to consult whichever oracle has revealed to Mr Ampaw that she has not broken any laws and that we must instead be “boring” wait for the outcome of the OSP’s investigation.
When it comes to this stolen money saga, outrage is the order of the day, but interestingly it doesn’t seem to be directed at the two individuals who are alleged to have stolen the money. I completely understand why, I mean anyone who has so much money in a room that one million dollars of it can be taken without alerting any suspicions, immediately seems like they have something to hide, because why would you chose to keep such exorbitant sums locked away in a room, unless they are ill-gotten gains, which cannot be declared for some reason. Add to that the fact that the person in question is a government minister, who was in post when the cedi was said to be slumping because of dollar hoarding, which resulted in inflation and the cost of goods increasing several times in one day; and the reason for overlooking the alleged thieves is obvious. Put plainly, it seems that a much larger theft may have taken place and that Ghanaian citizens are the likely victims.
Nonetheless, if we put our outrage toward former Minister Dapaah aside for a second, there is an uncomfortable truth to be reckoned with. It is a fact that Ghanaians are all too comfortable with the idea that a certain level of theft on the job is acceptable.
Indeed, my aunt has a beauty supply store in Ghana, and she routinely says that she has to factor in thefts by her staff as part of her business costs and jokes that it is a staff retention tool because if you are too vigilant with monitoring your stock, such that the staff are unable to successfully pilfer from you, they will quit to find a position where their employer does not keep such a close eye on their sticky fingers.
Though this is just one anecdote, if we are honest with ourselves, we all know of someone who has either taken advantage of their position for their own personal gain, even if it was just one of your mum’s friend’s stealing toilet rolls from her morning cleaning job or a relative skimming money off the top of the money sent to them to be put towards a building project that they have been entrusted with overseeing. The harsh reality is that regular Ghanaian people routinely turn a blind eye to profiteering and unscrupulous money-making schemes.
Whether it is because we are desensitised to it or don’t care as long as it doesn’t affect us, I don’t know. Either way, our collective outrage does not manifest strongly enough to stamp out dodgy dealings from the people we encounter in our everyday lives. Surely then, we can’t be too surprised when people rise to the highest ranks of leadership and become ever more grandiose in their shady schemes. After all, they have honed their skills in a culture where people accept shady schemes as routine. Why would they suddenly show restraint when in a position of power, with access to vast amounts of funds?
Despite this, it seems that we draw the line at the ‘national cake’, (a term I came across in reading Keni Ribeiro’s great blog post about the lack of patriotism in Ghana.
We as a people, rightly want our leaders to have Ghana’s best interests in mind, instead of simply scrambling to divvy up the national cake amongst themselves, but could it be, that we also need to play our part? Perhaps when we all stop trivialising petty thefts and what seem like minor liberties our collective standards will rise to the point where we may begin to see a shift in attitudes.
As long as we continue to turn a blind eye to these things the breeding ground for underhanded gains will remain fertile, so if we are all as appalled as we say we are, let us hope that sanitation Cece’s unfortunate saga will be a turning point in our minds and in Ghana’s future!
On Thursday 31 August 2023, the court is due to rule on whether her assets should remain frozen, so for now at least, the saga continues…