Ibrahim Mahama Ends Odaw Dredging

By Edmund Mingle

Engineers and Planners (E&P), the construction firm owned by the President’s brother, Ibrahim Mahama, has concluded its desilting operations on the Odaw drain in Accra.

It has also handed over all the equipment it took from the government for the project which it undertook free of charge.

Mr. Mahama peeling off his company's
brand sticker from the tipper trucks

Although it desilted three kilometers, representing about 40 per cent of the choked drain, the company believed it was time to pull out.

“I am pulling out not because I want to, but I believe we have done most of the work and others can also continue,” Mr. Mahama, Chief Executive Officer of E&P, told Journalists at the site on Saturday.

Asked whether the pull-out was as a result of the criticism and politicization of his involvement in the project, he said although the criticisms and politicization which he described as “very unnecessary and discouraging” for such voluntary work, he said the company needed to concentrate on its core business.

The choked Odaw drain was found to have contributed largely to the flooding of parts of Accra particularly the Kwame Nkrumah Circle area where the flood led to the explosion at a filling station, killing 159 people on June 3.

Mr. Mahama handing over the keys to the heavy
 duty vehicles to Ibrahim Abdulai, Caretaker of the
 Government Machinery House at Tema

Following the incident, Mr. Mahama volunteered to desilt the drain for free, but as the desilting progressed, members of the opposition New Patriotic Party and the Minority in Parliament questioned the appropriateness of E&P’s involvement in the project, amidst suspicion of underhand dealings.

Among other things, the critics questioned why the President’s younger brother had been allowed to use state equipment to execute a private contract.

But Mr. Mahama maintained it did not undertake the project as a contract, but just an agreement with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, to undertake the desilting for free.

As part of the agreement, the Ministry provided fuel and the equipment including tipper trucks and excavators, while E&P provided and paid personnel and desilting experts.

On how much he spent on the project, Mr. Mahama, told journalists during his inspection of the desilted stretch, that it would have cost the government some 15million dollars if the project had been undertaken as a contract.

“I have no regrets doing this. I did this just to show that Ghanaians are capable.

Mr. Ibrahim Mahama explaining issues
 to Reporters at the Odaw drain site

“We planned to operate here for a month, but we spent nearly four months on the project, and I think we have done our best,” he stressed.

According to him, they have desilted the most difficult part of the drain, adding explaining that any contractor the job would be awarded to would have it easy.

“What remains is to put a dredger in the undesilted areas and pipe out the soil,” he stressed.

From the Odaw drain site, he moved to the Government Machinery Safe House at Tema where he returned assorted earth moving equipment, used for the project, to the government.

The equipment consist of 20 tipper trucks, four bulldozers, three excavators, three wheel-loaders and two motor graders.

On his next line of action, he said the company would be focusing on a number of major contracts in the mining sector, where it does its core business, adding he only deployed his personnel to help the government to desilt the Odaw, as the company was awaiting those new contracts.

He expressed concern about the politicization of the project, saying such practice would continue to destroy the self-help spirit of well meaning Ghanaians.

Mr. Mahama peeling off his company's brand sticker
from one of the excavators

“We can solve our problems if we reduce and politics and the suspicious and bring our resources together to address challenges that affect all of us,” he said.

“I didn’t volunteer to undertake the project for free because the President is my brother. I did it because I felt I needed to help my country,” he said.

He therefore urged his critics and others which similar resources to support nation building, saying the country would not progress “if we continue with this pettiness.”