The promise was a clean break. Instead, we found a mirror. Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy has just shattered the quiet optimism of the new administration with a single, devastating observation.
Dr. Kennedy is no stranger to the inner sanctum of power; as a former NPP flagbearer hopeful, his critique carries the weight of an insider who knows how the gears turn.
“Since President Mahama regained the Presidency, many Ghanaians have been cheering for the success of his reset agenda,” Kennedy notes, acknowledging the benefit of the doubt he initially offered.
But that grace has expired. A bombshell investigation by The Fourth Estate reveals that under Roads Minister Governs Agbodza, the “Reset” looks remarkably like the “Loot and Share” it replaced.
Out of 107 road contracts reviewed by investigators, a staggering 81 were awarded through non-competitive tendering. That is three out of every four projects handed out in secret.
The data suggests that transparency is now a luxury the Ministry cannot afford. Kennedy reminds us that strict tendering laws in low-resource countries typically decrease project prices by 6%.
“Indeed, the NDC in opposition did an excellent job educating us about the evils of sole-sourcing using the NPP cocoa roads as a textbook case.”
The irony is thick enough to choke on. The very men who lectured the nation on “price inflation” and “government bleeding” are now the ones holding the surgical knife.
President Mahama himself once deplored how “everybody is cutting their pound of flesh” in government procurement. Now, his own minister seems to be presiding over a massive, uncompetitive butchery.
Kennedy’s disappointment is palpable, especially regarding the response from government spokespeople like Felix Ofosu Kwakye and Sammy Gyamfi. Their moral clarity has been replaced by cold, legalistic gymnastics.
“If this scandal will not lead to firings, resignations or suspensions, what will?” Kennedy asks, pointing to a vacuum of accountability that feels hauntingly familiar to the previous era.
There is a strange gravity here: the NPP’s outrage feels performative, yet the NDC’s silence feels complicit. It is a political eclipse where light cannot find a way out.
Kennedy perceptively notes that many NPP critics are likely “outraged, not at the corruption… but their exclusion from it.” It is a scathing indictment of our entire political class.
The physician warns that “higher, more powerful forces” are actively fighting the President’s reset, working instead to entrench the very rot Mahama promised to wash away with his return.
“Mr. President, if this scandal does not move you to crack the whip… you can mark this scandal as the moment your RESET DIED!”
The President is now standing at a crossroads where his predecessor, Nana Akufo-Addo, famously lost his way. Doing nothing makes them twins in the eyes of a frustrated history.
Kennedy calls on the Speaker of Parliament to use the National Integrity Initiative to intervene. We cannot wait for the Auditor General to find the bodies years from now.
The soul of the NDC was built on the pillars of “probity and accountability.” If those words still mean anything, the Roads Ministry should be a ghost town by Monday.
Where are the priests who prayed for this new beginning? Where are the activists whose feet are still sore from marching against the corruption of the last eight years?
The “Reset” was supposed to be a revolution of the spirit, not just a rotation of the people at the feeding trough. Silence today is a signature on a death warrant.
If the whip does not crack now, the only thing being reset is the clock on Ghana’s decline.
Who is truly in charge: the man who promised change, or the system that refuses to allow it?
