NDC members getting juicier contracts at our expense- Ken Agyapong laments
Controversial MP for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong, has lamented that party loyalists have been sidelined in the award of government contracts.
“NDC stayed in power for eight years and sidelined NPP people…So if you want to balance the equation, NPP in power also needs to resource its people for eight years.
“But the current NPP government is dealing more with the NDC and I have a problem with it,” he said in an interview on JoyNews, monitored by theghanareport.com.
The awards of contracts to party members in Ghana are seen as the spoils of an electoral war—a system criticised by civil society as encouraging patronage and corruption.
Party supporters have in sometime past fought over the management of even public toilets once their party wins political power.
He sharing jobs and contracts, persons believed to be aligned to the losing party are victimised in their businesses or kicked out of their jobs.
My son has been jobless because of political victimisation – Asiedu Nketia
It is the reason civil society organisations and think tanks, including the Institute of Economic Affairs, want Ghana’s winner takes all system scrapped as it contributed to the political antagonism and victimisation.
The Assin Central MP believes that the government is penny-pinching with its members, as it rewarded members of the opposition with contracts that the members of the ruling party deserved.
Asked if he ever benefited from a contract from an NDC government, he responded in the affirmative.
“It was only former President Mahama who asked the Energy Ministry to pay my $14m. It took six solid years for them to pay the money for a project that was completed in 2008.”
He stated that his wife had to appear before the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) 77 times for his entitlements to be validated.
It would not be the first time the issue of party members and contracts has come up.
In February this year, Chief Executive Officer of McDan Shipping Company Limited, Mr Daniel McKorley, got some Ghanaians scratching their heads when he admitted that he was a card-bearing member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and got his first contract from the Kufuor administration.
“I am with them; I am a member of NPP,” he said when he was asked on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana on 18 February 2020 when he was asked about his political affiliation.
He, however, mentioned that his companies are open to all businesses irrespective of the government of the day.
“I am a businessman. If today NDC calls me …” he said.
The vociferous MP who has often gotten in trouble within his own party, Mr Agyapong, announced that the sun will set on his political life after the 2024 elections.
The self-acclaimed millionaire said he would be better off concentrating on his businesses rather than wasting his time in Parliament—a job he described as being the most stupid apart from the job of an assembly member.