The Musicians Union of Ghana has come up for mention again in a matter concerning shady splurge of some GHC 3 million state money.
The amount is Ghana’s oil money reportedly funneled to the Association by the government, and the hefty sum was allegedly blown on supposed capacity building.
The revelation about the cash was made by the Technical Manager of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), Mark Agyemang.
“We built the capacity of MUSIGA. We did build the capacity of MUSIGA and it was 3 million Ghana cedis. MUSIGA and the general capacity building like subsidy of exams fee for students, provision of school uniforms, textbooks, provision of chalks were also capacity building just that some of the money found its way into areas that were not into the capacity building like MASLOC, MUSIGA, Exim Bank and all those areas, you’ll not see their core capacity-building initiative,” he said.
This is not the first time that MUSIGA has come up as a recipient of huge sums from the government that somehow has been blown on capacity building. During the Presidency of Bice Osei Kufuor, aka Obuor, a whopping Ghc2million was given to the Association by the Mills/Mahama government.
The money was squandered and never properly accounted for.
Obour and his team would claim that that money was also used for capacity building.
Meanwhile, after his Presidency, Obuor suddenly announced he wanted to be MP and started a campaign to contest on the NPP’s Parliamentary ticket for Asante Akyem South.
The transition and its dovetail to the lack of proper accounting for the cash led to speculations that Obour had channeled a better chunk of the money into funding his Parliamentary campaign. He has since pooh-poohed the claim.
Even so, fellow musician and the Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the Union, Ras Caleb Appiah-Levi, had sued Obour over the cash.
MUSIGA is one of the weakest Associations in Ghana even though it technically has so much cachet that it could use to raise money for worthwhile projects.
MUSIGA has been a total failure in the fight against payola, a thing it could have easily combatted if it had used some of the millions channelled to it to set up radio stations, critics have said.
Meanwhile, PIAC’s Mr. Mark Agyemang alerted the country that much of its oil money is being guzzled without much to show for it.
“Since we began producing oil, our debt rate has been increasing and 90% of the withdrawals from the stabilization fund have gone to the sinking fund to pay the debt. The stabilization fund has helped but we’re over-relying on the stabilization fund yet we’ve other sources of revenue that we can use to support what the stabilization fund is doing.”