{"id":94346,"date":"2025-09-16T04:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=94346"},"modified":"2025-09-16T04:58:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T04:58:00","slug":"oral-principles-strongly-undergird-my-decisions-as-foreign-minister-ablakwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=94346","title":{"rendered":"ORAL principles strongly undergird my decisions as Foreign Minister \u2013 Ablakwa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>2 Minute, 27 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has lauded President John Mahama\u2019s efforts to recover all stolen State resources through the establishment of the defunct Operation Recover All Loots (ORAL) Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can confirm that the principles of ORAL strongly undergird every decision I take as Minister for Foreign Affairs,\u201d said Mr Ablakwa, who is the former Chairman of the defunct ORAL Committee, which was a cornerstone of President Mahama\u2019s campaign and a legitimate popular demand of the Ghanaian people.<\/p>\n

He stated this when he took his turn at the Government Accountability Series held at the Presidency in Accra.<\/p>\n

He noted that some of the ORAL successes at the Foreign Ministry included:<\/p>\n

The reclaiming of all the Ministry\u2019s land at Airport Residential area, which had been sold and aborting the illegal sale of Ghana\u2019s diplomatic property in Lagos, Nigeria, and assisting National Security to arrest the prime suspect, Bright Mensah Bonsu, who received a part payment of $1.5 million that was not paid into any government account.<\/p>\n

He mentioned the reversing of the Ministry\u2019s initial decision to sell Ghana\u2019s diplomatic property in Lusaka, Zambia, stating that \u201cI have made it clear that no sale of the Ministry\u2019s landed properties will be tolerated.<\/p>\n

\u201cPursuant to that, we have established an asset register to take proper inventory of all our assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Minister also listed the cancellation of a November 2024, $3.5 million Abidjan Embassy renovation contract, which did not follow due process.<\/p>\n

He said they were boldly and decisively dealing with the canker of corruption at their Washington DC mission and carrying out systemic overhauls.<\/p>\n

Mr Ablakwa said to guarantee value for money, transparency and accountability, no contract had been awarded on a single-sourced basis since he became Foreign Minister.<\/p>\n

He stated that there were strict instructions to their procurement department to ensure that all procurement was competitive and complied with the Public Procurement Act.<\/p>\n

The Minister also mentioned that from passport courier companies, ticketing companies, Passport Head Office annexe, cleaning contracts, staff buses \u2013 every single contract has gone through a competitive, credible process.<\/p>\n

Competitive procurement is no longer the exception, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am able to disclose that ORAL does not enjoy only local support; there is overwhelming international support for ORAL, which our ministry has been facilitating with other institutions of state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shall continue with our international collaboration as we support President Mahama and the Attorney-General to make ORAL succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Ablakwa said for instance, during President Mahama\u2019s recent historic state visit to Singapore, an agreement was reached to support ORAL by creating a bilateral framework to build the forensic capacity of Ghana\u2019s anti-corruption institutions including: the Economic and Organized Crime Office, the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the Office of the Special Prosecutor and the Police Criminal Investigations Department \u2013 taking into account Singapore\u2019s globally celebrated anti-corruption reputation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"SamuelForeign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has lauded President John Mahama\u2019s efforts to recover all stolen State resources through the establishment of the defunct Operation Recover All Loots (ORAL) Committee.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1332,8621,1906,1883,744,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ablakwa","category-foreign-minister","category-hp-news-5","category-national","category-oral","category-politics","category-popular"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}