-GH¢26.5 BILLION VANISHED
-BOAHEN AIDOO WALKS FREE
-RANDY ABEY HELPLESS
The contrast could not be starker. On one side, the Dr. Randy Abbey led management team at Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) lays bare the financial wreckage of eight years billions in debt, phantom rehabilitation projects, and contracts signed with no apparent regard for payment timelines. On the other, the man who presided over it all, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, walks free, uncharged, uninvestigated, and publicly silent.
President John Dramani Mahama has ordered the Attorney General to investigate. Current CEO Randy Abbey has provided the dossier detailed, specific, and damning. Yet as the revelations mount, so does the question haunting civil society and opposition alike: if this is not a case for prosecution, what is it?
Abbey’s disclosures before cabinet and in subsequent briefings paint a picture of institutional pillage dressed as policy. In 2016, COCOBOD stood on solid ground: positive equity of GH¢1.8 billion. By December 2024, that had cratered to a negative equity position of approximately GH¢3.8 billion a swing of GH¢5.6 billion in eight years.
The debt portfolio inherited by the new administration stands at GH¢32.91 billion, plus $481 million in external obligations. Of that, GH¢10.06 billion falls due in 2025 and 2026 alone. These are not abstract figures; they represent obligations that will constrain the government’s ability to pay farmers, maintain operations, and stabilise the sector for years.
The AfDB Phantom
Perhaps the most egregious case study involves a $350 million loan from the African Development Bank, secured to rehabilitate 156,400 hectares of cocoa farms. COCOBOD currently pays approximately $61 million annually to service this debt.
The result? Only 40,000 hectares have reportedly been completed and handed over to farmers. “All the $350 million gone, and only 40,000 hectares completed,” Abbey told investigators. An additional GH¢700 million from COCOBOD’s own coffers was also expended on the same project.
The mathematics are damning: if 156,400 hectares were to be rehabilitated at the same cost per hectare as the completed portion, the total would exceed $1.3 billion. Instead, farmers received less than a third of the promised land, while COCOBOD services a loan for work not delivered.
The Roads to Nowhere
The cocoa roads saga reveals a similar pattern of contractual recklessness. From 2014 to 2024, COCOBOD’s total commitments to cocoa roads reached GH¢26.5 billion. But the concentration of awards in the final years of the previous administration raises eyebrows: between 2019 and 2021 alone, contracts worth GH¢21.5 billion were signed.
In 2020 a single year contracts valued at $1.2 billion were reportedly awarded. This is precisely the amount of COCOBOD’s entire syndicated loan facility for cocoa purchases. Money meant to buy beans from farmers was instead committed to road contractors.
The Producer Price Review Committee had allocated GH¢4.7 billion for road projects over the entire period an average of about GH¢430 million annually. Against this allocation, contracts worth nearly five times that amount were signed.
Abbey spelled out the implications: “If you get an allocation of an average of GH¢430 million a year and you award contracts of GH¢21.5 billion, it means it will take you 47 years to pay.” Yet these contracts contained 90-day payment clauses after certification, creating a liability trap that the new management now confronts.
The Sack Mountain
Even routine procurement appears to have been weaponised. Before the 2022 cocoa season, COCOBOD held 94,615 bales of sacks in stock each bale containing 300 sacks, enough for millions of bags of cocoa. Despite this, management procured an additional 75,000 bales.
The pattern continued. In December 2024, weeks before the change of government, an irrevocable letter of credit worth $48 million was issued for 80,000 additional bales. Current management is now utilising existing stock and confirms enough remains for the coming season. The $48 million commitment was entirely unnecessary.
The Midnight Contract Culture
What unites these cases is not merely financial imprudence but a apparent culture of last-minute contracting. The December 2024 sack procurement. The $1.2 billion in 2020 road contracts. The pattern suggests deliberate end-of-year and end-of-regime commitments designed to lock in obligations beyond the tenure of the signatories.
Observers note that many of these contracts were awarded with little competitive tendering, raising questions about which contractors benefited and what political or personal connections facilitated their selection.
The Accountability Vacuum
Yet for all the revelations, the man at the centre remains untouched. Joseph Boahen Aidoo, who served as COCOBOD CEO throughout the period in question, has not been arrested, charged, or publicly questioned. He walks free while his successor tallies the debts left behind.
The contrast with other jurisdictions is striking. In neighbouring countries, senior officials presiding over losses of this magnitude would face immediate investigation and likely prosecution. In Ghana, the phrase “administrative lapses” still suffices to shield former officials from legal consequences.
The AG’s Burden
President Mahama’s directive to the Attorney General now carries immense weight. The investigation must determine not only what happened but who was responsible and whether criminal conduct occurred. The evidence assembled by Abbey provides a roadmap; the AG’s office must now follow it to its conclusion.
But the clock is ticking. Memories fade, documents disappear, and witnesses develop amnesia. If the investigation drags without visible progress, public cynicism will deepen. Ghanaians have seen too many probes yield too little accountability.
The Bigger Picture
The COCOBOD revelations extend beyond one institution. They raise fundamental questions about Ghana’s governance architecture: How do billions of cedis vanish without triggering alarms? Why do internal controls fail so consistently? What happens to contractors who benefited from inflated or unnecessary deals?
For the Mahama administration, the COCOBOD case presents both opportunity and risk. Vigorous prosecution would signal a new era of accountability. Hesitation or political interference would confirm the deepest suspicions that the rot runs too deep to excavate without implicating the powerful.
As one civil society activist put it: “The numbers are there. The contracts are there. The beneficiaries are known. If nothing happens now, it never will.”
Joseph Boahen Aidoo walks free. GH¢26.5 billion in road commitments. A $350 million rehabilitation project that delivered 40,000 hectares. And a nation watching to see whether accountability remains an abstraction or finally becomes real.