Africa-Press – Ghana. Private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu has said that it is allowed for persons to make claims based on anecdotal evidence which is a claim usually based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.
He stated that it is not at all times that people can hold onto hardcore facts or evidence before they are able to make allegations.
If so, there will be no headway in the fight against corruption, he said.
“Anecdotal evidence is sometimes allowed,” Kpebu said on Saturday, October 28 while contributing to a discussion on the allegation made by the Former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei to the effect that they paid bribes to get contracts, to provide the evidence to him.
For his part, a Governance Expert Professor Enoch Antwi noted that contractors usually come to some who have the public platform to voice their concerns, with claims of paying bribes to get contracts but the contractors fail to provide the evidence.
He indicated that these contractors even plead that their names should not be mentioned for fear of losing out on future contracts from the government.
He pleaded with the road contractors who gave the information to
Also speaking on Saturday October 28, Prof Antwi said “The same contractors who went and told Prof Adei and Prof Adei knows he had to cite his sources. [But] individuals will come and tell you something, you ask them to give the evidence but they tell you I can’t give it to you. So he is now alone piper in this situation even though he is fighting a common cause.
“So my advice to the contractors is that if you help Prof Adei by bringing the evidence it is going to help our despensation. Why? Because in the future you are no longer going to pay even the little bribes that you are paying.
“Look at our roads, sometimes they do it and in six months the road goes off and they will tell you that they have been paying bribes to get it. Once they pay the money, 10 percent, the money left to execute the road project is so small that they cannot do it.”
Prof Adei had alleged in an interview he had information to the effect that persons seeking road contracts were told: “Road contracts will be given to you, provided you pay 1 million upfront….”
He said “One of the greatest disappointments of Nana Akufo-Addo’s regime is that honestly, he raised the hope of Ghanaians. Ghanaians expected they have gotten a leader with a vision, with the charisma, with the determination and it seems if he doesn’t redeem himself in the next 14 months, he would go down in history as one of the most disappointing leaders,” he said.
He added “This road contract would be given to you, provided you put one million upfront, not after you have gotten the money. This is what Akufo-Addo must be thinking about and if he knows about it, he must be ashamed.
“That now his people demand from you a certain amount before you would be considered for a job. Why? Because when they get it, whether the government pays you or not they have gotten their money. It is as if people are in a hurry to loot the country before the end of Akufo-Addo’s term.”
Acting on this allegation, the Minister of Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, on Monday 23rd October 2023, requested the Executive Director of the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to fully probe the allegations.
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