Scholarship Bonanza: We’ll soon publish full list of beneficiaries – Fourth Estate

The Fourth Estate, a private media organization, has announced its intention to publish the full list of scholarship recipients from 2019 and 2020, as uncovered by their investigative report.

An investigative piece conducted by The Fourth Estate discovered that influential people as well as children, relatives and associates of powerful figures were awarded scholarships against the Scholarship Secretariat’s primary purpose of providing local and foreign scholarships to academically gifted but financially needy students.

Initially denied access to the beneficiary list by the Scholarship Secretariat in March 2021, The Fourth Estate persisted, invoking the Right to Information (RTI) Commission.

The RTI Commission ruled in favour of disclosure, asserting that since the scholarships were funded with public money, transparency was paramount. However, personal information is to be redacted before the data is released.

The Scholarship Secretariat’s response to the RTI request showed that it had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, covering both foreign and local scholarships.

Speaking to the host of the Citi Breakfast Show, Bernard Avle on Citi FM, Seth Kwame Bokpe, a journalist with the Fourth Estate said “There are a little of over 900 people who benefitted from the secretariat and we will be publishing the full list soon and be making the value-for-money analysis.”

Known members and activists of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) formed a large chunk of persons who benefited from the scholarships including a special assistant to Second Lady, Samira Bawumia.

GBP17,355 was paid for the special assistant to attend a university in the United Kingdom but he never stepped on campus and dropped out of the programme after attending only a few online classes from Ghana.

There were also reported cases of multiple scholarships. At least 26 people received multiple scholarships which allowed them to pursue different programmes in two consecutive years or different programmes in a single year.