NDC Gets All-Clear To Protest Dubious COVID-19 Test At Kotoka

-As Benedict Peters’ Days Get Numbered

The Minority opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Parliament has secured the go-ahead to picket at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in protest of the Akufo Addo administration’s continuous use of a crony company to scam inbound travelers with a dubious COVID-19 antigen test.

The notice to stage the rare protest on March 30, 2022, was conveyed to the Greater Accra Regional Police Commander in a letter from the office of the Minority Leader, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu.

By Friday, March 25, 2022, the Police Service had given the Minority the all-clear for the protest. “We have just concluded a successful meeting with the Greater Accra Regional Police Command led by DCOP Denis Abade,” Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Ranking Member for Foreign Affairs wrote on his Twitter Page.

“All is set for our picketing at the Kotoka Int. Airport on Wednesday the 30th of March, 2022 at 3 pm. Time up for the Frontiers and Cronies Covid testing robbery,” he concluded.

The notice follows an earlier call by former President Mahama for the government to stop fleecing Ghanaians travelers with the mandatory COVID antigen test at Kotoka at a time that other countries, including the UK, have stopped making the test mandatory.

For many Ghanaians, what is even disheartening is that Frontiers Healthcare Services, a company owned by Nigerian fugitive, Benedict Peters, is making millions of dollars from the testing regime at the expense of GHANA.

And frontiers got the contract shadily through a questionable sole-sourcing arrangement even when it did not have its own laboratories to run tests.

The deal was reportedly facilitated by Professor William Kwabena Ampofo who is the Coordinator of the National Laboratory for COVID 19 Testing at Noguchi Centre for Medical Research.

Incidentally, Prof. Ampofo is a direct cousin to President Akufo Addo who is also curiously close friend with the owner of Frontier, Benedict Peters a fugitive Nigerian billionaire currently domiciled in Ghana and given extreme privileges by the Akufo Addo administration.

The company is 100% owned by Healthcare Solutions Limited (HSSL), a company which is, in turn, owned 100% by The Peters Family Company Limited, an opaque company registered in the notorious Caribbean Island tax haven called Dominica.

Incidentally, HSSL was incorporated on June 3, 2020, while Frontier Healthcare Services was also incorporated in Ghana around the same time (on July 21, 2020). These incorporations were barely two months before the Akufo Addo administration handed the company the dubious contract to test for COVID-19.

Following the 2020 elections, the Appointments Committee of Parliament has been trying to find out the Ministers who signed the Frontiers contract. But strangely, every Minister interviewed has said they did not know who signed that contract.

Apparently, the contract was signed between Frontier and Yaw Kwakwa, the GACL Managing Director who has been cited for massive corruption.

Meanwhile, while the legitimacy of Frontier continues to generate anger among the Ghanaian public, Benedict Peters’ company keeps cleaning out at the KIA. In 2020, for instance, Frontiers made US$17,359,500, out of which it paid a paltry US$1,167,300 as royalties to Ghana Airport Company.

In 2021, Ghana Airports Company made US$9,482,445 while Frontiers made a staggering US$85,342,005, an amount believed to have been shared with its powerful contacts at the Jubilee.

This unholy alliance between the Jubilee House and Benedict Peters is despite the fact that since 2014, Peters has been accused of crimes ranging from conspiracy to commit fraud, tax evasion, corruption, and money laundering using his Aiteo Group of Companies.

On February 28, 2020, the Abuja division of the Federal High Court was asked to compel the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to immediately arrest and prosecute him.

Incidentally, it was at this same time that he was hired by the Akufo-Addo government hired his company, Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited to sell COVID-19 testing at the Kotoka International Airport at a prohibitive US$150 per test.

The high price tag was a source of protest and controversy in the country but the Akufo-Addo government kept the contract on until the ECOWAS Commission announced in 2021 that it wants all member countries to implement a uniform price per test of US$50.