Private legal practitioner and a member of the legal team of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Abraham Amaliba, has stated that the Attorney General Godfred Yeboah Dame ‘slept’ on his duties to the state in the Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) agreement that has cost Ghana $170 million in judgement debt.
He said, the GPGC contract that the erstwhile NDC administration entered into involved experts from the Ministry of Energy, Electricity Company of Ghana(ECG) and the Volta River Authority(VRA) and was presented to parliament for the 275 parliamentarians to vet in the House before been ratified.
Mr Amaliba posits that for the Attorney General to say the GPGC agreement was bad for the country when he had the opportunity to prosecute the case when the case went into arbitration simply means he slept on the job when he should have been wide awake to abrogate the contract.
He alleges that the country’s exploits at the arbitration and the appeal processes leaves nothing to be desired. That, he said, shows the Attorney General was lackadaisical in the performance of his duties in the interest of the country.
Mr Amaliba was reacting on the back of the botched agreement between the state and the Ghana Power Generation Company(GPGC) that has cost the country $170 million in judgement debt, in an interview with Berla Mundi on the New Day show on TV3, Friday, June 25.
“The contract that was entered into by government under the NDC was a contract that experts at the Ministry of Power, the ECG, the VRA all negotiated. The contract was presented to the 275 parliamentarians, in there in parliament were senior lawyers who have also done some years of legal practice. And so for an Attorney General to want to divert attention and say that the agreement was bad for Ghana, for me begs the question. You have failed in your duties as an Attorney General to prosecute the case when it went into arbitration, our attempt at the arbitration and our attempt at the appeal processes leaves much to be desired”, he declared.
He said Mr Dame failed to put out his best for the country as a lawyer in his involvement in the GPGC agreement that has cost Ghana $170 million in judgement debt.
“In their attempt to set aside the habitual award, they were given two windows of opportunities and the Attorney General was in Accra sleeping and saying COVID. Did you hear what the judges at the arbitration said about our excuse, they lambasted us and said that it was unreasonable and untenable. You don’t go to sleep and say COVID, weren’t people traveling when there was COVID? So the issue is that, an agreement was entered into by the state, a new government has come in with a vindictive nature, thinking that all that the previous government did was wrong, so they will just terminate the agreement”, he charged.
By Barima Kwabena Yeboah|3news.com|Ghana