Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons is raising serious transparency and value for money concerns about Ghana’s proposed $240 million e-immigration project.
Bright Simons alleges that the project is a potential avenue for financial mismanagement at a time when the country is already wallowing in an economic mess.
In an X post cited by The High Street Journal, he is demanding that the project be halted immediately adding that a forensic audit and an open national conversation to determine its value for money and appropriateness be conducted.
The government wants to overhaul Ghana’s immigration system which is estimated to cost the taxpayer some $240 million; a figure Bright Simons believes could reach about $300 million when other excluded costs are added.
In his post, Bright Simons argues that the cost appears too inflated and lacks proper justification explaining that the country already has a functioning electronic immigration management which is already in use at the airport.
The existing system, he argues, performs adequately, taking biometric data such as photos and fingerprints, and could be upgraded at a very lesser cost compared to the government’s figures.
Some development partners, Bright Simons reveals had already provided $16 million to upgrade and improve this system under the e-Transform project. An additional $2.9 million was allocated specifically for integrating Terminal 3 of Kotoka Airport into the system.
However, the vice president of IMANI Africa alleges that despite the funding provided by partners to upgrade the system, interference from the office of the Vice President derailed the project paving the way for this new outrageous deal.
“A physical e-gate (biometric access physical point) shouldn’t cost more than $10,000 per unit if sourced competitively. It is the software and integrated Immigration management service that makes it an “Immigration e-gate” and which constitutes the bulk of the cost and makes this a multimillion-dollar affair,” he explained.
He emphasized that, “it is disingenuous to make it look like the e-gate can ever be a standalone system. Otherwise, how is it going to clear people to enter Ghana?”
He further alleges that the deal appears designed to benefit a private company, which has been linked to previous government projects involving national identification services.
Simons claims the current arrangement is structured to avoid competitive tendering, allowing for what he suspects is significant cost inflation. Under the deal, the private contractor is reportedly pre-financing the project and would recover its investment through public charges, likely placing an undue financial burden on Ghanaians.
Bright Simons says, “all these projects are designed to avoid competitive tender and to allow massive COST INFLATION. Then, they turn around and say that the vendor/contractor is pre-financing and will RECOUP their investment through…wait for it…public charges!”
At the moment, it is quite unclear if the President-elect’s newly established preparatory team for Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) will take particular interest in these allegations and follow up.
