The Fourth Estate, a private media organization, has announced its plan to release the full list of scholarship recipients from 2019 and 2020, as revealed by their investigative report.
Speaking to the host of the Citi Breakfast Show, Bernard Avle, Seth Kwame Bokpe, a journalist with the Fourth Estate said “there are a little of over 900 people who benefitted from the secretariat.”
Through their investigation, The Fourth Estate uncovered that influential individuals, as well as children, relatives, and associates of powerful figures, were granted scholarships.
This is contrary to the Scholarship Secretariat‘s primary objective of providing scholarships to academically gifted but financially needy students, both locally and internationally.
Initially denied access to the beneficiary list by the Scholarship Secretariat in March 2021, The Fourth Estate persisted and sought intervention from the Right to Information (RTI) Commission.
The RTI Commission ruled in favor of disclosure, emphasizing the importance of transparency since the scholarships were funded with public money. However, personal information will be redacted before the data is made public.
According to the Scholarship Secretariat’s response to the RTI request, GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million were spent in 2019 and 2020, respectively, covering both foreign and local scholarships.
The Fourth Estate plans to publish the full list soon and make “the value-for-money analysis.”
A significant number of individuals who benefited from the scholarships were known members and activists of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), including a special assistant to the Second Lady, Samira Bawumia.
One particular case involved GBP17,355 being paid for the special assistant to attend a university in the United Kingdom. However, it was discovered that he never physically attended classes on campus and dropped out of the program after only participating in a few online classes from Ghana.
Additionally, there were instances of individuals receiving multiple scholarships. At least 26 people were found to have received multiple scholarships, enabling them to pursue different programs either in two consecutive years or within a single year.