Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Development Authority (NDA), Sumaila Abdul Rahman has been directed to submit his traveling document to the Tamale High court and make sure he complies not to travel out of Ghana till the determination of a case of alleged corruption against him and his two deputies and others. In a Meta post, the Office of the Special Prosecutor noted that all four accused persons pleaded not guilty to charges of corruption and have since been granted bail in the sum of 2 million Ghana cedis with sureties to justify with landed properties. According to the post, “The first accused person, Sumaila Abdul Rahman has been stopped from traveling out of Ghana till the determination of the case after he pleaded, he has a scheduled trip in relation to his work as Chief Executive Officer of NDA. Other accused persons are two deputies of NDA; Stephen Yir-Eru-Engmen and Patrick Seidu and the Chief Executive of A&QS Consortium Limited, Andrew Kuundaari”. The post stated. The case has, however, been adjourned to 28th February 2023 for Case Management Conference. Background It would be recalled that the Special Prosecutor 2022 started an investigation into corruption at the NDA after a written petition dated June 15, 2022, addressed to the Special Prosecutor by Martin Luther Kpebu, a private legal practitioner, requesting for an investigation into the operations of NDA and the actions of its Chief Executive and Board Chairman. “The complaint alleged that NDA awarded a contract to A&QS Consortium Limited (hereafter, A&QS) on 28 January 2020 for consultancy services for the supervision of some constituencies in the Upper West Region under the IPEP for the contract sum of Five Million Seven Hundred and Twenty Thousand cedis (GHC5,720,000.00). However, upon the exit of the then Acting Chief Executive who executed the contract, the contract sum was illegally increased to Ten Million Four Hundred Thousand cedis(GHC10,400,000.00) by the removal of the page containing the original figure of Five Million Seven Hundred and Twenty Thousand cedis (GHC5,720,000.00) and its replacement at page 25 clause 33.1 of the contract with a fresh page containing the bloated figure of Ten Million Four Hundred Thousand cedis (GHC10,400,000.00) to make it appear as if it is the contract executed by the previous Acting Chief Executive,” the report stated. The investigation was conducted over a period of six months, interviewing twenty persons over a period of four months before making of a move to prosecute.
