Stinking NDA/SADA Scandal Escalates Several More Tricycles, Motorbikes for Poor Northerners Looted by NPP Agents

New revelations from the scandalous Northern Development Authority (NDA) indicates that apart from the 400 tricycles spirited away by ruling party agents, an additional 300 more tricycles and 700 motorbikes and helmets have disappeared without a trace.

These items valued around GHC 4 million were meant for poor farmers and entrepreneurs in the Northern part of the country.

According to Tamale-based Radio Tamale, it has incontrovertible information that the 300 additional tricycles were shared among the three deputy CEO of NDA. Security officers at NDA reportedly said the motorised tricycles were mostly spirited out of the NDA yard in the dead of the night.

The scandal is also reminiscent of the phantom GHC 47 million spent by the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) on tree planting and Guinea Fowl farming in Northern belt under the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).

Earlier this week, documents intercepted by Whatsup News and other media houses revealed how President Akufo Addo on December 12, 2019, mysteriously sacked Alhaji Abdel Majeed Haroun, the Chief Executive Officer of the NDA while he was in the process of exposing the looting of over 400 tricycles by members of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

On December 12, 2019, President Akufo Addo in a curt letter booted Alhaji Haroun. The sack letter was written on behalf of the President by his Executive Secretary, Nana Asante Bedituo, did not give any reason for the dismissal.

According to the October 28 letter complaint letter written Alhaji Haroun youth from a company called Sav-Link Company late last year stormed the NDA compound and made away with 10 containers filled with 400 motorised tricycles. Each of these tricycles cost an average of GHC 5,000.

Incidentally, Sav-Link belongs to the Mohammed Baantima Samba aka “Chairman Do All” who is the Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP.

“I write to make a formal complain that about 400 pieces of tricycles that were meant for the Northern Region have been taken away without my permission or any of my staff…Sav-Link Company entered the NDA premises and taken away without our authorisation, Ten Forty-footer containers, each holding 40 Tricycles…,” an enraged Alhaji Haroun stated in his letter.

The blatant looting at the NDA may have exposed the failure of the Akufo Addo administration to handle development authorities for Northern Ghana differently.

In 2017, President Akufo Addo promised not to repeat the NDC’s SADA scandals, saying: “I do not want a repetition of the scandals that rocked SADA to befall my government and the three development authorities we want to establish,” the President said.

When the NPP took over power, it restructured SADA to NDA, however, critics have noted that “the value is the same”, particularly with the latest tricycle revelations.

The contentious tricycles were indeed imported in 2015 by the defunct SADA at a total value of US$9.5 million. Almost half of the more than 5,000 tricycles were left to rot and at the mercy of the weather, while some have been distributed, a large chunk has been looted by people linked to the ruling NPP.