Council of State member receives GH¢365,000 ex-gratia after attending only 1 meeting

A cross-section of Ghanaians have called for the scrapping of the Council of State since it may no longer be relevant in today's governance architecture of the country.

This comes after a member of the Council of State, Alhaji Abubakari Abdul-Rahman, popularly called Alhaji Short attended only one meeting since his appointment in 2019.

Reports by the Fourth Estate indicated that Alhaji Short who was the former Upper West Regional Chairman for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was paid GH¢365,000 ex-gratia even though he attended the meeting only once.

It stated that the Council of State released the information on the attendance of members after the media house dragged it to the Right to Information (RTI) Commission adding that it failed to include the signed copies of attendance sheets as requested.

The RTI Commission ruled that "salaries and allowances of the Chairman and members of the Council of State are exempt information and cannot be made available to you."

The report stated that Alhaji Short attended only one Council of State meeting in 2019.

He was appointed alongside Major General Richardson Baiden (retd) who replaced Alhaji Mogtar Sahunun and Nana Obiri Egyir, both of whom have passed away.

Alhaji Short's Council of State meeting attendance Pulse Ghana

Alhaji Short and Major General Baiden were sworn into office in December 2019 to serve as members of the Council of State.

He [Alhaji Short] was also serving on the governing board of the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company Limited in 2018, as well as the Bui Power Authority, and records from the Council of State show that he attended meetings only once that year.

He did not attend any of the 29 plenary meetings of the Council of State in 2020. The council held the second-highest number of meetings in 2020, after the 32 meetings it held in 2017.

When The Fourth Estate reached out to Alhaji Short to react to his absence at the meetings, he said he had issues with his eyes shortly after taking the Council of State position, the reason he was not regular.

According to him, he explained his situation to the chairman of the Council of State and he was regularly briefed on what transpired noting that he ended his tenure as the board chairman of the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company Limited and a member of the Bui Power Authority board.

Alhaji Abubakari Abdul-Rahman Pulse Ghana

He also explained that when he was appointed to serve on boards, he only go to those meetings to "go and sit down and listen."

The request by The Fourth Estate to the RTI Commission comes after the Paramount Chief and the Agbogbomefia of the Asogli State, Togbe Afede XIV rejected over GH¢365,000 ex-gratia paid to him for serving on the Council of State between 2017 and 2020.