▪️First Ghana player to score at a World Cup
▪️Most World Cup goals by any African player (6)
▪️Scored in every World Cup he's played in
▪️Scored Ghana's fastest World Cup goal (68 seconds)
▪️Most World Cup appearances for Ghana (11 games)
Asamoah Gyan 👑🇬🇭
PUBLIC OFFICE, PUBLIC TRUST
I support recognising public officials who perform their duties well and make a meaningful difference in the lives of Ghanaians. Public service demands sacrifice, commitment, and leadership. When public officials deliver exceptional results, we should acknowledge and celebrate their contributions.
However, I am concerned about the standards that govern such recognition.
Citizens place confidence in government when public officials act with integrity and exercise sound judgement. For this reason, we must address not only actual conflicts of interest but also situations that create the perception of impropriety.
The current debate surrounding the Ghana Ministers of State Excellence Awards is not simply about those who attended the event or those who received awards. Rather, we should ask a more important question: should public officials receive awards from events that solicit sponsorships or financial contributions from the institutions they supervise or lead? This is an ethical question that must be settled.
Public officials should be recognised on the basis of performance, measurable outcomes, and genuine impact. Public recognition should never be linked, directly or indirectly, to financial contributions. When organisers seek sponsorship from institutions and subsequently honour officials from those same institutions, they create legitimate concerns about fairness, independence, and credibility. Even where no wrongdoing has occurred, such arrangements can weaken public trust and diminish the value of genuine excellence.
Professor Michael Kpessah-White has publicly alleged that organisers requested payment in connection with an award nomination. Another public sector Chief Executive Officer privately shared a similar experience with me and chose not to participate in the event after organisers made financial demands. These allegations raise serious concerns and warrant careful scrutiny.
I also wish to correct a few misconceptions.
First, the State did not organise these awards. They were organised by a private event management company.
Second, this was not the inaugural edition of the awards. Public officials under the previous administration also participated in and sponsored these events. However, we cannot justify a practice simply because others engaged in it before us. We criticised many of these practices in the past because we believed they weakened accountability and encouraged mediocrity. We should not defend them today.
Ghanaians elected this government on a promise of reform. They expect us to uphold higher standards, strengthen public institutions, and demonstrate a clear departure from practices that undermine public confidence. We cannot advance a Reset Agenda while tolerating conduct that raises avoidable ethical concerns.
Following my engagement with the Deputy Chief of Staff, Hon. Nana Oye Bampoe Addo, she assured me that the government would develop a regulatory framework to guide the Corporate Social Responsibility activities of State-Owned Enterprises. I understand that the committee responsible for this work has already commenced its task. I welcome this initiative and hope it delivers clear standards that promote transparency, accountability, and good governance.
We hold public office in trust for the people of Ghana. We must therefore conduct ourselves in ways that strengthen public confidence in our institutions. We should recognise excellence on merit, reward performance fairly, and reject practices that cast doubt on the integrity of public service.
Ghanaians will judge the Reset Agenda not by our rhetoric but by the policies we implement and the standards we uphold. If we are to build lasting public trust, we must lead by example and hold ourselves to the same principles we demanded of those who came before us.
I conclude by saying; MAY WE NOT BECOME WHAT WE CRITICIZED !!!!
#BuiltToLast
#GhanaFirst
I admire how Bright Simons is living a full life and able to quickly put his thoughts together in a timeous manner while remaining coherent and logical.
Very few are able to write this detailed on the go!
1. A major news channel in Ghana says there is a ruckus in the Bank of Ghana (BoG) board. One faction wants the BoG's swanky/controversial new HQ sold to a lucky real estate company and leased back at a juicy rate.
2. Apparently, a shrewd financier hopes to get bank financing for the whole gig.
3. Another faction is up in arms and is the one behind the leak.
4. Be that as it may, the BoG furiously disputes the news report. It says that such reports are, wait for it, dangerous because they have the potential to undermine public confidence in the BoG.
5. The BoG says that it "remains committed to transparency and will continue to engage stakeholders through its official channels."
6. Howzat?
7. In March 2025, the BoG told Parliament that it had tasked AESL to undertake a value for money audit into the HQ project. 15 months onwards, it simply REFUSES to publish the audit report.
8. Which is a serious problem because the costs of that giant edifice are a total blackbox and the whole project has been a masterpiece of opacity. Let me jog some memories.
9. BoG's Board took the decision to initiate the project in Dec 2019. The allocated budget was ~$100m. The procurement authority approved ~$81.9m. After the restricted tender was won by the contractor, the budget was suddenly jacked up to $121m. The BoG Board finally settled on $222.8m with the contractor.
10. But as I hinted earlier, the project is actually in the range of $600m if we are to be strict about the numbers.
11. In Feb 2025:
- $230m had been paid to the contractor.
- $31.8m was owed to the contractor.
- $8.6m was earmarked for a separate ICT contract.
- $15.8m was earmarked for integrated electronic security systems.
- $11.1m was earmarked for furniture & furnishings
- $48m was allocated for taxes & levies.
12. That is $345m, I lie?
13. Well, the original design that was costed for the clearly discredited tender at $100m included a bunch of things that the $345m hasn't delivered. And remember that the earmarked allocations were merely on budget. If cost overruns are just 2x, how much really are we talking about?
14. Here are the original design items that are yet to be delivered. According to the BoG, "grey boxes" have been provided for them to be added later:
- Data Center
- Currency Processing Center (no accounting, by the way, for the underserviced De La Rue-provisioned system),
- Specialised Security System
- Still not clear if the helipad is fully functional
15. Now, let's add the piece everyone forgets: the prime land!
16. The BoG acquired the West Ridge/SIC land by compulsory acquisition through E.I. 304. The going rate in that prime area is easily $1500 per sq m. BoG doubled the acreage of Bank Square from 73,000 sqm to nearly 150,000 sq m. That is $225m of prime land!
17. In short, this is a $600 million (& counting) project that has katanomically been hoisted as a massive success because of zero policy accountability.
18. What continues to fascinate me is how well katanomics explains this opacity (with elite complicity) and lack of policy accountability in a democracy as vibrant as Ghana.
1. A friend kindly sent me a short clip of architect David Adjaye extolling the virtues of Bank Square, the new HQ of the Bank of Ghana that he designed for contractor GoldKey to build.
2. Since the imposing building divides opinion on its elegance and beauty, I was very keen to hear what the designer himself had to say.
3. It was surreal!
4. I heard the architect talk about how when he saw the other designs entered into the competition by rival bidders, he literally burst out laughing. He said that his competitors had thrown up all manner of "Dubai like" glass and steel buildings that look like "dancing" structures.
5. His choice of design was heavily informed by the deeper symbolism of what the new Bank of Ghana HQ stood for. He had concluded that the apex body managing a nation's wealth cannot look transient. It must project absolute permanence and ascendance.
6. He thus bypassed lightweight design trends of the current era in favor of heavy, earth-bound stone to project regulatory power and systemic stability. In fact, he said he would have done a ramped-earth tower if he had the chance! And then, with a glint in his eye and a chuckle rolling down his throat, threatened to build one somewhere very soon.
7. So, why surreal?
8. Regular readers may recall that I have worried in the past about the cost overruns during the building's development. I think that by the time the various features that were suspended to get it over the finishing line are added, it may top $600 million. But that was not what jolted me. At all.
9. It is the uncanny semblance between the architectural logic behind BoG's Bank Square and that behind a cluster of buildings built between 1917 and 1973 for a financial institution in Rhode Island that used to finance hospitals in Providence.
10. The cluster of buildings then came to be taken over by banks. One was eventually donated to the Rhode Island School of Design, which is how I came to know their story in the first place. You see, I had once considered pursuing the artistic portion of my creative passions.
11. When you look at the Sovereign Banking Tower (as the main tower in the cluster aforementioned is sometimes called when not being called "One Financial Plaza") and its adjacent sister buildings, and then flip your glance over to Bank Square in Accra, you can't help but gasp.
12. Exactly the same thinking that drove Adjaye many decades after and in a totally different cultural setting can be found in the design language of John Carl Warnecke & Associates. It is manifested in the rectangular prism with beveled vertical edges adorning the skyline of Providence.
13. See attached images (incl one of the rejected "dancing" designs).
14. What is at work here? I think it is the same spirit that drove both Newton and Leibniz working oceans apart to independently invent the calculus: creative telepathy.
15. There is a bond that binds all feats of intellect regardless of culture, context, and circumstance.
Tweeted it before: “silent treatment” or “ghosting” is when you reach out to someone and they ignore you.
If you don’t reach out and they don’t either, that’s not ‘ghosting’ & you’re not a victim.