The Twilight of the Arrogance of Power: Never Nearing With Appointees of the Former NPP Government Who Looted From the Public Purse in Various Capacities

Did you know that Dr. Mustapha Abdul Hamid, the former boss of the National Petroleum Authority, was once the face of moral politics in Ghana? The preacher of ethics and governance, the man who spoke of values as if virtue itself were public policy, now stands accused in one of the country’s biggest corruption scandals. Over GH₵291 million and US$332,000 are said to have been siphoned, and he is standing trial with nine others on charges of conspiracy to commit extortion, extortion, abuse of office, and money laundering.

It is almost tragic and yet deeply ironic. Not long ago, Dr. Hamid called his own criminal case “useless.” Those were his words. But the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) quickly set the record straight, reminding everyone that the case was serious, active, and built on hard evidence, including seized assets, bank trails, and ongoing investigations. The facts were already public, but arrogance, as always, was louder than awareness.

Then came the cavalry, defenders galloping in with noise instead of knowledge, brandishing rhetoric instead of reason. They dismissed every report as rumor and every fact as fiction, hoping their noise would drown out the record. At the front line was his off-the-record lawyer, Akbar Yussif Rohullah Khomeini, who turned Facebook into a courtroom, arguing with blind confidence as if social media were the Supreme Court. When that collapsed, he called for backup.

That is when HAY & Partners arrived, lawyers for Dr. Hamid, armed with stationery and outrage, not evidence. They released a letter meant for optics, to soothe panic and spin perception. It accused the OSP of being “false and misleading” and insisted that no assets belonging to or associated with Dr. Hamid had been seized. A bold claim, but a false one, because the evidence stood on the OSP’s website, clear, verified, and dated. And in their desperate spin, they even tried to lecture the OSP about ethics, calling its public updates “unbecoming,” forgetting that under Act 959, the OSP is mandated to brief the public on corruption cases.

Together, they built a defense on a tired chorus: “show us the assets” and “our client remains innocent until proven guilty.” But innocence is a presumption, not a disinfectant. Their argument read like a parody of advocacy, as if rehearsed from a handbook titled How to Lose a Case in Court.

Then silence. The moment the OSP released the full inventory, their denial collapsed. The list was not gossip; it was a map of assets: HOWO and SITRAK fuel tankers, a Mercedes-Benz GLE 450, multiple Kings Energy fuel stations at Millennium City, Lapaz, Opeikuma, and Dansoman, parcels of land from Tamale to Adenta, Haatso, North Legon, and Kumasi, and luxury apartments, The Signature, The Address, The Monarch, The Lennox, Loxwood House, Beyond Residence, and The Bantree, spread across East Legon, Roman Ridge, and Airport City. Over GH₵100 million and US$100,000 in assets have been frozen, with tracing still underway. These are not rumors. These are coordinates of corruption.

And just when the dust seemed to settle, it emerged that Dr. Hamid, whose mugshot now sits in OSP records, whose passport was surrendered, and whose name is on the stop list, was in court asking for that same passport. His reason? An “urgent political assignment” in Canada. The OSP opposed it, and rightly so, with the hearing set for Thursday, November 13, 2025. The irony writes itself: the man who called his trial “useless” now begs to leave the very jurisdiction where truth awaits him.

It is a familiar story. Ken Ofori-Atta once promised cooperation with the OSP but quietly fled the country after leaving office, becoming a fugitive of accountability. Between Ofori-Atta’s escape and Hamid’s attempted “assignment,” Ghana has seen two faces of the same privilege, one vanished in silence, the other still performing bravado before boarding gates.

So what now of that loud claim that “no assets have been traced or seized”? That chorus has been crushed under the weight of its own deceit. It lies buried under the OSP’s own evidence, detailed, dated, and digital. As for the passport plea, may the court remember that justice serves the Republic, not the convenience of the accused.

Ghana is watching. The theatre of impunity is losing its audience. The age of untouchables is ending, and the gospel of moral politics has met its judgment day. And this time, even the scorpion’s tail will learn that fire cannot escape its own flame when truth finally begins to burn through deceit.