Ghana’s contestant was former President J. A. Kufuor. Indications before the winner was to be announced showed that he was the stronger candidate. For some reason, no winner was declared this year.

It was Kufuor’s prestige, his achievements in office, his impact as a leader and example for job well done that was under scrutiny. The same went for other worthy contestants like Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria.

What were Kufuor’s chances for winning the Ibrahim Award? Plenty, except for the background noises emanating from Ghana during the Prize Committee’s deliberations.

For some in Ghana, the prize was seen as a show to benefit just one person, Kufuor, and never as one that ultimately would have benefited the entire country. Therefore, a convenient backdrop to display discontent was created while the deliberations went on.

The backdrop was to show the world how undeserving Kufuor was for the prize by helping to seed doubts in the minds of the Prize Committee; or apprehensions about the nature of his office. Other fortuitous events also helped.

The case of the M & J scandal was the fortuitous one. It could have given pause to any Prize Committee formed to give a Ghanaian official an award this year. And the reason being that it established the unfortunate idea that Ghanaian officials were not above corruption.

 
Ironically, the M & J case had nothing to do with Kufuor. It was entirely an NDC government problem, but the resonance could have affected Kufuor’s chances all the same.

Note that a committee considering to pin an award on a Ghanaian official, in this case a president, in the midst of the M & J scandal, would hesitate to do so because the temptation to ask “what next?” would be too strong.

The same thinking could have affected the medal chances of Mbeki and Obasanjo. There were rumors of corruption in both Nigeria and South Africa just as there was in Ghana. But one needs only to know that these two presidents were succeeded in government by members of their own parties. As such, the likelihood that fellow party members will pursue relentlessly corruption charges against them was very remote.

Yet Obasanjop and Mbeki also missed the award too; which makes the assumption that Kufuor could have won the prize even stronger, were it not for the uniqueness of the political situation at home.

In Ghana, the opposition party, the NDC, succeeded Kufuor’s NPP and has so far shown the willingness and the anxiousness to bring Kufuour’s reputation down. The Ibrahim Award would have run contrary to this ambition.

For example, there is the atmosphere created by the Ghana@50 Secretariat hearings. The suspicion from NDC quarters was that a lot of money was squandered by this secretariat set up by the Kufuor’s administration to administer the 50th year anniversary of Ghana’s independence.

Just last week, the Chief Executive of the secretariat, Dr. Wireko-Brobbey, showed up to explain his end of the business. Surprisingly, the Ghana@50 enterprise made profit, according to Dr. Wereko-Brobbey. He stated a huge cash profit for the event; something historically uncommon for government established enterprises in Ghana.

The response the public should have heard following Dr, Wereko-Brobbey is yet to come. But to declare boldly and publicly that an enterprise made profit should always be tangible and a verifiable proposition and on the basis of the Secretariat’s balance sheet, which ought to have been seen or demanded for by the Ghana@50 inquiry team long before the chief executive came to the witness stand.

Did the Ghana@50 secretariat show profit or not? If not, then the commission could continue with the process to find where the proceeds went. Otherwise, the commission is morally bound to acknowledge Dr. Wereko-Brobbey statement as correct and to congratulate the officials of the Ghana@50 secretariat for job well done; rather than to continue with the inquiry and hope to find an incidental chance to ruin a reputation.

Another NPP government act under inquiry in Ghana while the Mo Ibrahim Prize was being considered was the Vodafone deal with Ghanatelecom.

According to an expert, the value of Ghanatelecom in 2004 was $400 million US Dollars, set by a competent financial organization, ECOBANK. In 2007, the Kufuor administration sold part of the shares of Ghanatelecom to Vodafone for $900 million US Dollars.

The problem in a nutshell for the NDC government was why Ghanatelecom should be sold for $900 million when there was an offer to purchase it for $1.2 billion US Dollars. The omission, to them, meant that there was some underhand deal between buyer and officials of the NPP administration.

Forgotten in the NDC calculation for corruption was the issue of competence to run a national asset such as Ghanatelecom, in the delivery of critical public service like telecommunications for the benefit of the entire population of Ghana. In such cases, the highest bidder need not necessarily win.

Also forgotten in the investigation was the case of Malaysia Telecom’s purchase of the same Ghanatelecom during the NDC administration of the 90s. For the lesser amount of $150 million, Malaysia Telecom had Ghanatelecom only to run it poorly for lack of competence.

Inquiries to all these facets of the Kufuor administration continued relentlessly while the Mo Ibrahim Award was being considered. And there was not a single word of encouragement or support from the NDC government for Kufuor. By October 15, 2009, The Vodafone Commission report had been released by the Ghana government; strategically timed before the announcement of the Ibrahim Award. Under these circumstances of mistrust and uncertainty who would now doubt the outcome?

To understand how difficult it must have been for Kufuor to win the award this time, one must go back to the imagery of the U20 World Cup final with Brazil, and the penalty of the red card handed to one of our players. Then consider the Mo Ibrahim award as a soccer match with the current administration of Ghana giving our player, Kufuor, yellow cards, if not red ones.

Kufuor may yet win the Ibrahim Award since he has two years left for consideration. But the question is will these relentless investigations of his administration ever stop?