THE ACTUAL CAUSE OF KENNEDY AGYEPONG’S BEEF WITH VICE PRESIDENT MAHAMUDU BAWUMIA

Immediately after the inauguration of the Akufo Addo administration, there was a mad rush to place favourites in places that were considered lucrative, in order to generate money to pay off campaign debts and build war chests for future Presidential campaign.

It was in the horse trading that Bawumia was successful in placing his main financier Alfred Obeng of Approachers Publishers as M.D. for BOST. The scramble to recoup campaign investments is what has led to the current stinking corruption scandal enveloping BOST. Agyepong had supported someone else for the lucrative BOST position, but did not express dissatisfaction with Obeng’s appointment because they are friends and he was aware of the contribution Obeng made in financing NPP’s victory. So even though Agyepong has taken snipes at Bawumia in the midst of the whole BOST brouhaha, that is not the reason for his beef with Bawumia. The person upset with Bawumia the most over the Obeng BOST appointment is Boakye Agyarko. Harbouring Presidential ambitions, whoever was appointed to BOST was supposed to be an Agyarko loyalist and help develop the war chest for the pending the expected NPP Presidential contest

In the post inauguration mad rush for lucrative positions and projects, Bawumia managed to seize control of the National Identification Card Project. The outgone NDC govt had been in the process of launching a new tender for the National ID process. Bawumia took control of the process. Kennedy Agyepong teamed up with Zoomlion under one of his numerous companies to bid for the contract. In the tender Margin’s Ltd won the contract. Margin’s is a company perceived to be associated with the late Atta Mills, because of some contracts they won under the NHIS in President Atta Mills time.
Kennedy has never forgiven Bawumia for the loss of that lucrative contract. This is mainly one of the lamentations of Kennedy when he says I haven’t won one single contract under Nana Akufo Addo. This is what he means when he says, “I know who the contracts are going to”. “They are going to NDC people”, Agyepong’s reference in this regard is to Margin’s Ltd.

This is the meat of Kennedy Agyepong’s grievance against Bawumia and the reason for his rants against his own party. His belief is that he is entitled to all lucrative contracts based on the work he did for the party. He is always quick to threaten the NPP with exposing the dubious things the party did to win elections. This is meant to draw attention to himself and remind Nana Addo that he has not started eating. And people who did less than him, have their mouths full already.

The infighting occurring in NPP is over lucrative positions and juicy contracts and the mad rush to grab resources in preparation for the expected contest for the Presidency post Nana Akufo Addo.

With this kind of mentality, is this one too a government that can fight corruption?

Adams Mohammed