Government uninterested in auditing Covid funds – John Mahama

Former President John Dramani Mahama says the Akufo-Addo-led administration has refused to audit how covid-19 relief funds of about GHS19 billion was spent despite several calls on the government to do so.

According to Mr Mahama, the monies the government said it spent to ease the suffering of Ghanaians due to the pandemic is “laughable.”

He said since the government has refused to audit the covid-19 account, it will take another government to do so and make them accountable to the people of Ghana.

Speaking to the media in Tamale as part of his Thank you tour of the Northern region, Mr Mahama said: “We suggested that the auditor-general should audit how covid-19 funds were used because remember they took $200 million out of the stabilisation fund, then they got one billion dollars from the IMF, $400 million from World Bank and other monies used for covid relief and when you have taken such public monies you must account for it, when you spend public money, you must be audited and so we asked for an audit of the covid relief, unfortunately, the auditor-general was hounded out of office but the finance minister came to parliament and gave us an overall picture of much they spent and he said GHS19 billion cedis was spent on covid-reliefs.

“Every Ghanaian wants to know how that GHS19 billion was spent and it is obvious that this government is not interested in auditing that fund.”

According to the 2020 flagbearer of the NDC, it will take a new government to come and audit and “say you said you spent GHS19 billion, how was the GHS19 billion spent? They say they fed how many people, for how many days? When we saw the figure for which they said they spent money providing food, it was just laughable that’s why I say there must be accountability after every period of time and the only person that can hold them accountable is if a new dispensation comes and say: ‘how did you spend this, explain it to the people of Ghana’, otherwise then the intention is to go beyond eight years and sweep all this misspending under the carpet and give an easy pass to people who have made money illegally from the coffers of the people of Ghana.”

Mr Mahama noted that the government used covid-19 as an excuse for a lot of things and “it’s been used as an excuse for the current hardships that we face.”