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Opinions of Wednesday, 5 May 2021

Columnist: Mashoud Bawa

Manasseh, stop inciting the public against Zoomlion: A court of competent jurisdiction couldn’t find Zoomlion’s fumigation contract under Mahama fraudulent

Manasseh Azure Awuni Manasseh Azure Awuni

The Supreme Court of the republic led by Justice Jones Dotse on December 3, 2020 ruled that the Auditor General had no such powers to surcharge and disallow money amounting to over 184 MILLION GHANA CEDIS paid to Zoomlion by government as a result of fumigation contract it undertook during the Mahama regime. It said “Zoomlion is not liable to the powers of the Auditor General”. In the same vein, the High Court presided by Justice Georgina Mensah-Datsa on January 31 had also said the Auditor General did not establish any fraud against Zoomlion in the discharge of its contractual duties and receiving payment for same. “Her ladyship found no evidence of fraud and so held”.

Going by these court decisions, one would expect that somebody like Manasseh who knows it all would have avoided the use of words such as fraud and shady against the company Zoomlion Ghana Limited to avoid any future court actions against him. I may forgive him for his poverty in understanding the law if he was such an ignorant writer but no, this is deliberate thus Manasseh carefully chooses his words in his perpetual fight to bring Zoomlion down as a result of his chronic hatred for the man Jospong and his conglomerate the same manner he pulled the Agams Group owned by the venerable Roland Agambire down which has left many a youth unemployed up till now.

If not hatred how does a Nana Addo’s government implementation of taxes in 2021 relate to a contract that was performed between 2007 and 2018?
In a facebook comment, Manasseh sought to invite the public to vent their anger about the tax increments on the likes of Zoomlion as though the company was government or the president to increase taxes on VAT, NHIL, Road Toll and Telecommunication among others. It reminds me of our days in the jungle, when a stronger person offends a weak one he vents his anger on the weaker ones around him. Yes, for fear of attacks by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) foot soldiers Manasseh has decided to step on the head of Jospong time and again unjustifiably and one has no other words to describe his actions than chronic hatred and wickedness perpetuated by severe gluttony.

He states “You'll pay more for data to help fund the National Health Insurance Scheme. But while the hospitals were struggling to get the NHIS funds, the government paid more than 184 MILLION CEDIS to Zoomlion under another shady fumigation contract. If #fixyourself--your mind--you'll understand that deals like this cost you in taxes and they can also cost your life. How? The NHIS money that is diverted into these shady deals could have improved healthcare delivery for us all.

#Ifyoufixyourself, you will stop saying Manasseh hates Jospong and look at how these issues affect you every day. Until you get angry about deals such as this, we cannot #fixthecountry- Manasseh Azure Awuni”.

The character Manasseh is incredulously wicked, a vindictive hypocrite, greedy, self-centered and cannot be pretending to serve the people of Ghana. When Dr. Mensa Otabil owner of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) was fingered in a bank fraud covering over 60 MILLION GHANA CEDIS Manasseh a member of the ICGC who’s wedding was officiated by Dr. Otabil himself chose silence over his loud mouth today and that smacked of selfishness and self-centeredness and selective justice.

Indeed, Matthew Asampambila Agambire in his recent modernghana.gh publication titled “The viciousness of the ‘Fourth Republic’ vs the hypocrisy of ‘The Trial of Otabil’ described Manasseh better in the words. “When the public outcry became unbearable and the onslaught of criticisms from the public visited upon him like a pogrom, he still chose silence. Social media was awash with a concurrent unanimous statement “Manasseh should speak”. Very many people exhaustively used the word “hypocrite” on my born in Bongo, raised in Keta Krachi brother that, when I typed “who is the biggest hypocrite in Ghana” on google, Manasseh Azure Awuni’s name popped up lol. The backlash on his decision to remain numbly silent came with so much pressure and “vawulence” like a dangerous volcanic eruption, splashing and emitting ashes of molten with the unbearable heat capacity of approximately 1 million joules/Kg degrees Celsius. It was this unbearable heat that coerced my brother to speak eventually. And when he finally did on the 26th of June 2018, to give a veneer of respect and reverence to his very own, the title of the article that would later find its way into his famously celebrated folder, ‘Manasseh’s folder’ would be christened “THE TRIAL OF OTABIL”.

In the “trial of Otabil” Manasseh said and I quote..”Great men and women, they say, are like eagles. They don’t flock. They are spotted one at a time. Once in a while. It is even rarer to witness their trial. Only a few centenarians see such events once in their lifetime. I witnessed one in my youthful days and wish to tell this rare tale in detail”.

That is the award-winning Manasseh who sees no evil, hears no evil and indeed spoke no evil against the man who was board chair of a bank which collapsed in his hands due to indescribable transfers. He is now here touting that Jospong/Zoomlion engages in shady deals against which the court said no that has not been established. He runs around with a skewed documentary he did to impugn that Zoomlion engages in fraudulent activities, God have mercy on him. Has Manasseh heard or also read that Otabil has suspiciously acquired mansions in Europe and America among others recently? What did he say about those allegations since he feeds on allegations to make himself popular?

Zoomlion has raised the face of waste management in Ghana to enviable standards and no word in appreciation ever came from Manasseh. In the next two years every region in Ghana will have its own state-of the-art waste recycling plant and all the metropolis will have a liquid waste treatment center. Accra and Kumasi have got theirs already with Tema, Takoradi and Tamale under construction. Just last week, Zoomlion launched a 5 MILLION Ghana CEDIS environmental sanitation research fund for Ghanaian universities to access and find solutions through research to the teething sanitation problems confronting the country, did you hear about that too? Do good on to others the way you want it done onto you. It’s a wise saying, I didn’t propound that, just take for counsel.

I am wondering why the owners of Zoomlion have decided to play leniency on you all this while. That is why you are still running your mouth. You would have been responding to questions in the law court by now for deliberately denting the image and inciting the public against the company.

You are aging now stop the hatred and PhD (pull him down) programme in vendetta, hypocrisy, selective justice and act the one that you say you are (mouth piece for the voiceless) even if the voiceless happens to be the strongest or the richest you will have to defend them for they stand right and do so for the week when it is so. I cannot further see your success in bringing Zoomlion down as done to the Agamb’s Group. You are simply acting in vanity.