The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashiaman and board member of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Mr. Alfred Agbesi, was quoted by the Ghanaian Times Wednesday, as calling for the arrest and prosecution of the former Managing Director of TOR, Dr. K. K. Sarpong, for running down the company.

To him, the current problem confronting the refinery is attributable to Sarpong, and he must therefore be held accountable.

The Chronicle is not against the prosecution of Dr. Sarpong, if investigations prove that his inactions resulted in the current mess at TOR. We have always argued that those handling public institutions must treat such places as they would have done to their personal business.

The primitive thinking that state institutions can be handled anyhow, since they belong to government, should be treated with all the contempt that it deserves. The Chronicle is therefore of the opinion that if Dr. Sarpong negligently caused the problems that TOR is currently facing, then he must be dealt with according to the laws of the land.

But for any action to be brought against the man, the due process of the law must be followed.

The Chronicle thinks Hon. Agbesi, who is a lawyer, made a monumental legal mistake when he called for the arrest and prosecution of Dr. Sarpong for running down TOR. To us, the call of Hon. Alfred Agbesi means that he has already sat in court, heard Dr. Sarpong and pronounced him guilty. Unless the Times did not properly report what he said, nowhere in the story did we read that investigations have been conducted into the affairs of TOR and concrete evidence established that Dr. Sarpong was the source of TOR problems.

The Chronicle wishes to advice the Minister of Energy not to listen to Agbesi’s tirade, otherwise, he would be laughing at the wrong side of his mouth.

A forensic audit must first be conducted into the administration of the former Managing Director to unearth what went wrong, before taking any action against the man. The former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, disgraced the Kufuor administration on more than two occasions in court when the clamour to get him behind bars took precedence over proper investigations into the crime he was being accused of committing.

People like Hon. Agbesi must learn from the experience of his predecessors, instead of following in their wrong footsteps. It is wrong to pronounce somebody guilty outside the court system, just because he is perceived to be your political opponent. The Ashaiman MP should have first called for investigations into the administration of Dr. Sarpong, instead of asking for his prosecution for no apparent crime that he has committed.



Source: Chronicle