Former Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko has said “it is an act of ignorance and stupidity” for anyone to hold him responsible for the $170 million judgment debt slapped on the government of Ghana by a Commercial Court in London for unlawful termination of a power purchase agreement with independent power producer Ghana Power Generation Company (GCGP). “When a cabinet decides on a matter, how does it become the personal decision of the individual who has to do the representation of cabinet?” Mr Ayarko asked. “To think like that means you are not even fit to participate in governance”, Mr Agyarko said on Accra-based Citi FM. “A cabinet takes a decision based on a report produced by a technical committee and the sector minister is asked to go and implement the report then you say that it is the sector minister’s personal liability?” he wondered. The former minister noted: “when I was in office, some people tried to get me to vary the report as approved by cabinet and my position was clear that if you are a sector minister and cabinet approves, it does not lie within your remit to alter the decision by cabinet”. “So, it amazes me that some people can stick their mouth and say that because I was minister, I should be personally charged with the responsibility of that liability. It is ludic”, he said. Mr Agyarko, however, believes Ghana is better off with the $170 million judgment debt. “We have paid almost over $1 billion for excess capacity. The review committee estimated that the contract, as they were, if they were allowed to stand, the country will be paying at the end of the 13th year, $7.2 billion in excess capacity charges”. “Now, if the country is going to be saddled with $7.2 billion for excess capacity, we needed to rethink. In the PPA review, what it said was that if we could get the termination and the management of all the excess capacity, the liability that we will be faced with is about $600 million out of pocket.” “Now, $600 million in year one compared to $7.2 billion, now even if you do the next present value calculation and bring the $7.2 billion into a one-year payment, we are still better off”. “I don’t understand why the people whose time these excess capacity contracts were signed now have the guts and the audacity to accuse people who are trying to manage the mess they created”. Meanwhile, Pru East MP Kwabena Donkor, who was the Minister of Power in the erstwhile Mahama administration and signed the power purchase agreement with GPGC, which was later cancelled by the Akufo-Addo administration leading to a $170-million judgment debt, has said he is ready to face a probe by the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service as hinted at by Attorney General Godfred Yeboah Dame. Mr Dame had said the previous administration is to blame for the $170-million judgment debt slapped on the country by a London commercial court regarding the 2018 unlawful termination of the PPA. He, thus, intends lodging a formal complaint with the CID to probe the deal, which was signed between the two parties in the Mahama administration, since, according to him, a report by a committee constituted in September 2016 revealed that the agreement had issues and consequently resulted in excessive power supply. “The fact, as borne out by the PPA committee’s report, was that the agreement, together with other agreements, had resulted in such excessive power supply to the state”, he told Accra-based Joy FM, adding: “The state was going to lose $586m per annum and a cumulative cost of about $7.6billion dollars between 2013 and 2018.” “So, I think that when it comes to financial loss, it is so clear in my mind that the responsibility lies clearly with those who entered into the agreement”, he noted. The basic point, he said, “is that the entry into this transaction was unnecessary”. “The entry into this transaction was what resulted in financial loss to the state.” He revealed: “I, on account of all of this, am going to write a formal complaint requesting an enquiry by the CID into the conduct of the public officers who acted in the manner which resulted in the signing of an agreement which resulted in financial loss to the state.” “I think that first and foremost, the entry into the agreement itself was wrong”, he asserted. “There was no justification because their own committee determined that the agreement was going to result in excessive power.” “The committee set up by the NDC in 2016 – against the background of a recognition that there were so many PPAs entered into by the NDC administration, and, therefore, those agreements were going to result in excessive capacity development, as it was termed – came to a conclusion that this agreement had to be terminated. The committee singled out this particular agreement for termination”, he stressed. Responding to the AG’s comments, Dr Donkor, who superintended the contract in 2015, said government’s work is a continuum and, so, “if today, another attorney general, who the London court said had slept on the job, suddenly thinks he can divert attention by recommending investigations by the CID, it is his right”. “They can always conduct investigations but the truth always stands out”, he told Valentina Ofori-Afriyie on Class91.3FM’s mid-day news 12Live on Wednesday, 23 June 2021. “This particular agreement”, he noted, “had the shortest duration of four years and it was the only one that did not require any financial security from the Ghanaian state”. “It was signed in July 2015. I exited public office in December 2016. I signed it going through the appropriate processes. It went to cabinet, it came to parliament; you can refer from the Hansard and find out whether there was any argument from their side on the floor of parliament”, he argued. Concerning the AG’s claim that a committee recommended the termination of the deal