New Ameri deal: I’m unaware Akufo-Addo was misled – Dame

Attorney General-designate Godfred Dame has said that he is not aware that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was misled on the new Ameri agreement.

Asked by North Tongu Lawmaker Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa what he makes of a publication to the effect that the President was misled over the agreement as reported in a section of the Ghanaian media, Mr Dame told the Appointment Committee of Parliament during his vetting on Friday February 12, 2021 that “I am not aware of such a situation of the Attorney General misleading the president.

“I am rather aware of an opinion of the Attorney General indicating that there were no grounds for the termination of the agreement. Subsequently, I am also aware of a revision of the agreement by the Minister of Energy whereby savings in the sum of about 57million dollars was made.”

The former Attorney General added that “Those are the facts that are available to me.”

The Daily Statesman in August 2018 reported that President Akufo-Addo was misled into granting executive approval for the Ameri deal under the guise of there being an urgent need to have a bill laid in Parliament before its rising.

Under the proposal, the Greece-based Mytilineos International Trading Company was to assume management responsibility for the AMERI emergency power-generation arrangement negotiated by the past National Democartic Congress (NDC) government, in effect extending the original outsourcing agreement by ten years.

On his return to Accra from the 53rd session of the ECOWAS Heads of State meeting in Togo, that year, the President quickly requested and received a further briefing on the new deal.

This revealed that the agreement to which he had given approval on July 31 lacked the requisite input from the Attorney General and the Ministry of Finance. The President had been misled to believe that both departments had assessed the deal thoroughly.

By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana