
The Fourth Estate, a private media organization, has announced its plan to publish the complete list of scholarship recipients from 2019 and 2020, as revealed by their investigative report.
Through their investigative piece, The Fourth Estate uncovered that influential individuals, as well as children, relatives, and associates of powerful figures, were awarded scholarships, contrary to the Scholarship Secretariat’s primary goal of assisting academically gifted but financially needy students.
Initially denied access to the beneficiary list by the Scholarship Secretariat in March 2021, The Fourth Estate persisted by invoking the Right to Information (RTI) Commission.
The RTI Commission ruled in favor of disclosure, emphasizing that since the scholarships were funded with public money, transparency was crucial. However, personal information will be redacted before the data is released.
In response to the RTI request, the Scholarship Secretariat revealed that it had spent GHS237.5 million and GHS200 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively, covering both foreign and local scholarships.
Speaking to Bernard Avle, host of the Citi Breakfast Show on Citi FM, Seth Kwame Bokpe, a journalist with the Fourth Estate, stated, “There are a little over 900 people who benefited from the secretariat, and we will be publishing the full list soon, along with a value-for-money analysis.”
Known members and activists of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) formed a large chunk of persons who benefited from the scholarships including a special assistant to Second Lady, Samira Bawumia.
GBP17,355 was paid for the special assistant to attend a university in the United Kingdom but he never stepped on campus and dropped out of the programme after attending only a few online classes from Ghana.
There were also reported cases of multiple scholarships. At least 26 people received multiple scholarships which allowed them to pursue different programmes in two consecutive years or different programmes in a single year.