Vitus Azeem criticises govt’s 5G deal with week-old firm

Anti-corruption campaigner, Vitus Azeem, has raised concerns over the government’s decision to award a 5G licensing contract to NextGen InfraCo, a company that was established merely a week prior to the contract’s approval.

This comes after Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, defended the government’s decision to grant a 5G licensing contract to NextGen InfraCo.

In defence, the Ablekuma West MP stated that NextGen InfraCo was specifically established to undertake the 5G rollout. She added that at the time, there was no other infrastructure company with the capacity to manage the rollout.

The minister further explained that the direct award of the contract to this new company is part of the government’s strategy to circumvent past challenges and accelerate the deployment of the 5G network in Ghana.

However, Mr. Azeem, in an interview with Citi News, criticized the government’s approach, highlighting a pattern of sole sourcing and awarding contracts to companies lacking a proven track record.

He lamented the apparent disregard for procurement laws designed to ensure competitive bidding and value for money, suggesting that such practices result in significant financial losses for the country.

“That has been the behaviour of this government; sole sourcing, giving contracts to companies which have no track record and it is so unfortunate. We have a procurement law that exists to ensure competitive bidding with the hope that we will get value for money for the contracts that we award but it appears that this government always finds an excuse to subvert the procurement law and that is unfortunate. This leads to a lot of losses for the country and something has to be done about it,” he stated.

Adding to his critique, Mr Azeem questioned the transparency of the transaction, challenging the government to disclose whether the company had been advertised, its tax records, and the identities of its beneficial owners.

“Certainly if she [Ursula Owusu-Ekuful] claims that the company was just formed for this because they could not get an appropriate company to bid, did they advertise? What are the tax records of this company and who are the beneficiary owners of this company?

“We have a law that requires the disclosure of beneficial owners; are they politically exposed persons or are they affiliates of the party… these are questions that they need to answer if they are talking about transparency and accountability.

“If they are trying to justify then they need to come out with more details to convince us otherwise what they have said is not enough as to be the genesis of the transaction,” he stated.