Former Minister of Health Bernard Okoe-Boye has accused the current Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, of fabricating claims surrounding the controversial Lightwave e-health project, describing the minister’s allegations of irregularities as “false and politically motivated.”
Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Thursday (30 October), Okoe-Boye refuted assertions by the Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, that the previous administration paid more than 70% of the contract sum for less than half of the work completed under the health digitisation project.
According to him, the Lightwave contract — valued at US$100 million — was about 75% to 80% complete when his administration left office.
He explained that the level of work was assessed based on “workload, not the number of health facilities connected,” arguing that the larger tertiary hospitals required significantly more resources and infrastructure than smaller health centres.
“When we left office, Lightwave had carried out about 75 to 80 percent of the workload. What they received matched the work they had done,” Okoe-Boye said.
“The minister is misleading Ghanaians by counting facilities without considering the scale of work involved.”
He added that the Ministry of Health under his tenure maintained a steering committee — chaired by himself — which included representatives from Lightwave, the ministry’s IT department, and the Ghana Health Service, to monitor the project’s progress monthly.
However, Dr Okoe-Boye alleged that since the transition, the new minister has not convened a single committee meeting and is seeking to terminate Lightwave’s contract “to favour another private company operating under a deceptive name.”
“This minister has not even visited the data centre on the first floor of the ministry where all the servers are located. Instead, he’s made false claims that Ghana’s health data sits in India,” he said.
“He’s determined from day one to remove Lightwave and bring in his preferred company, which has no record of mass digitisation.”
The former minister further challenged the Health Minister to publish the alleged forensic audit report said to have uncovered “irregularities” in the project, claiming that neither he nor Lightwave has seen the document.
“These are claims from him alone. He has kept the so-called audit in his pocket and refuses to share it even with the contractors. How can you audit a partner and deny them the right to respond?” Okoe-Boye questioned.
He also criticised what he described as a breach of contract procedure, saying that the agreement between the government and Lightwave required that any dispute unresolved within 28 days must be referred to a third-party mediator, not unilaterally acted upon by the ministry.
“This storm you are seeing has been created by the minister to justify replacing Lightwave,” he added. “We built an e-health value chain worth over $73 million — one of the best in Africa — and in the name of politics, we are sinking it.”
The Lightwave project, launched during the previous administration, sought to digitise Ghana’s health records and hospital management systems nationwide. It connected major hospitals, including Korle Bu, LEKMA, and Tamale Teaching Hospital, to a central data hub aimed at improving healthcare coordination and efficiency.
