<<Print>>

When Supreme Court Justice Dotse last year characterized the incidence of lawyers on state payroll deliberately refusing to defend suits against the state as create-loot-and-share syndrome, most Ghanaians thought it was a phenomenon limited to the abrogation of contracts. Justice Dotse made the damning indictment when the Court ruled on the illegality of three foreign contracts, which abrogation led to judgement debts being awarded against the government; they should not have elicited compensation because they had not been approved by Parliament, the court held. All three judgements against the government were won by default, as lawyers from the Attorney General�s department had shied away from defending the government, allegedly for an agreed percent of judgement debt awards. Ghanaians now know better; create-loot-and-share manifests in multifarious situations � subsisting contracts (Subah, GYEEDA, SADA), fraudulent land compensation claims, seizure of acquired government land, etc. etc. The create-loot-and-share methodology is simple: let us take case of the SubahInfosolutions Ltd-Ghana Revenue Authority telcoms� income-monitoring contract of 2010, Government gets a bee in its bonnet that the telecom companies were under-declaring their income and avoiding tax. It decides to attach to their nodes and electronically monitor their income live. However, the law that the government lawyers rolled out in 2007 � the Communications Tax Law � was left deliberately toothless. It contained neither provisions empowering government or its agencies to electronically monitor income streams of private companies, nor punitive sanctions for refusal to allow such monitoring. Such a provision and sanction did not become available on the statute books until July 9, 2013. Yet in May 2010, three solid years before Parliament gave the needed empowerment, GRA gave Subah Infosolutions a five-year contract to do the electronic monitoring that government has no power to impose on the telecoms. The opportunity to loot state funds was thus CREATED. Every month thereafter, GRA paid Subah for no work done. Till May 2013 when the Finance Minister suspended the contract, GRA had paid Subah, according to official admission, GH�74.3 million for no work done; LOOTING accomplished. Once there has been looting, SHARING would ensue as a matter of course. The latest practical demonstration of the create-loot-and-share saga is the seizure of about 60 percent of the Achimota School and forest land by the Mankralo Family of Osu, under the noses of the Lands Commission. The head of the family had claimed in court that though government acquired the land from the family in 1922, members of the family had been in �adverse possession� of parts of it for over 80 years, so that portion of land that they had so occupied should be given back to the family. The family exhibited a site plan covering approximately 172.68 acres of the 336 acres of Achimota School and forest land as the part they had been in adverse possession for decades and so should be ceded back. The Counsel for the Lands Commission, who was in court throughout the proceedings, did not contradict the claim of adverse possession or the site plan. With his hands tied, the judge awarded the 172.68 acres of land to the Mankralo family of Osu, leaving Achimota School, for which the land was acquired for its expansion, with a paltry 163.32 acres. A question now begs for an answer: what motivated the Lands Commission to turn a blind eye to seizure of Achimota land? An agreed percentage of the 172.68 acres thus won through the back door? Or a cocoa sack full of cash? More questions than answers, obviously. Given the pervasiveness of the create-loot-and-share syndrome in our body polity, The Chronicle advocates that the practice be equated to the provision of the 1992 Constitution that makes �causing financial loss to the state� a criminal act punishable by imprisonment. The Attorney-General, under whose tenure any such create-loot-and-share is permitted, his Solicitor-General and State Attorneys or any lawyer hired by an agency of state should be held liable for full refund of funds lost, or in default go to jail. Create-loot-and-share has become a desparate affliction and should be so treated! NOW!!