A former Deputy Executive Director of Cocoa Health and Extension Division (CHED) of COCOBOD has been recounting in court how Regional Managers of CHED, who worked under him, persuaded him to get them more litres of Lithovit liquid fertiliser for their respective regions.
According to Mr. Peter Okyere Boateng, these managers also spoke and wrote about the efficacy of Lithovit liquid fertiliser at CHED monthly report meetings.
He was giving his evidence in chief in the trial of former COCOBOD Chief Executive Dr Stephen Opuni and businessman Seidu Agongo at the high court on Monday, July 25, 2022.
Shedding light on the monthly meetings, Mr. Okyere, who retired from COCOBOD in March 2017, explained that the structure of CHED at the time required that a meeting is held every month at the head office in Accra where the regional managers will converge and account for the activities that they have undertaken within the month.
“As the Deputy Executive Director incharge of monitoring and evaluation of CHED, being very close to all the regional managers, before the meeting starts they come to my office and tell me things about their region and the kind of assistance they would want me to give them. And in this case, some of them, especially those who have used the Lithovit in their regions came to lobby me to lobby for them to get more of the Lithovit fertilizer because their farmers were very happy with the product.
“And in the report, they wrote about the Lithovit and it was all very good commendations of the product. So these gave me ideas that the product, Lithovit, is a good agrochemical for the farmers.”
“When you say good commendations, kindly tell the court what you meant by good commendations,” lead counsel for Dr Opuni asked the subpoenaed witness.
“The regional managers said they themselves observed that the farmers who were supplied with the Lithovit liquid fertiliser and who subsequently applied it had massive increase in their yields and that the farms were carrying very heavy loads of pods and they even challenged me to come round and see it for myself,” Mr. Okyere Boateng said.
The witness told the court that he took up the challenge to personally observe the impact of the application of the Lithovit liquid fertilizer.
“My lord, I had my scheduled field visits. So in April 2015, my Lord, I scheduled my field visit to the Brong Ahafo while the other teams went to the other regions to inspect the activities going on,” he said.
Mr. Okyere Boateng was therefore asked what he found out during this field visits in 2015.
He replied, “When I was going to the field in April 2015, I had various aims and objectives. And it was in these areas that I made observations:
“First, I was going to inspect the state of the nurseries to ascertain the readiness of the Cocoa seedlings being raised by CHED for distribution to farmers.
“Two, I was to inspect farms that are being rehabilitated to know at first hand the progress made.
“Thirdly, my aim was to determine the stage of the cocoa crops for the light crop season that COCOBOD was about to enter. So it was a form of crop forecasting.
“Forth, was to look at the efficacy of the Lithovit liquid fertiliser on the applied farms as had been reported by my regional managers, in this case of the Brong Ahafo region.
“And lastly, I was to meet all the field officers in the various district within the region, learn from them their problems and their comments on various programmes and activities and also talked about the operations of CHED for the year with them.
“These were the objectives that I set for myself in April 2015 when I went to the Brong Ahafo region with my technical officer.”
The former Deputy Executive Director of CHED gave a brief overview of the division.
CHED came out of the defunct Cocoa Services Division and it was initially called Cocoa Swollen Shoot, Virus and Disease Control Unit. The major operation of this unit, now CHED, is to undertake activities to control the cocoa swollen shoot virus diseases in farmers’ farms.. Also, the division is in charge of extension education of cocoa and coffee farmers. The division is also incharge of distributing CODAPEC and HITECH agrochemicals to cocoa farmers in collaboration with the CODAPEC unit of COCOBOD. CHED is also incharge of supplying improved planting materials to cocoa farmers in collaboration with the SPD (Seed Production Division). Lastly, CHED is responsible for rehabilitating aged and disease infected cocoa farms. So these are the operations that my team and I monitored.
As the Deputy Executive Director, Mr. Okyere Boateng’s job entailed monitoring of all the programs, activities and operations of CHED with the staff in the department and giving report to the Executive Director for the attention of management of COCOBOD for the necessary action.
The former COCOBOD Chief Executive, Dr. Stephen Opuni and businessman Seidu Agongo as well as Agricult Ghana Limited, are facing over 25 charges, including defrauding by false pretences, willfully causing financial loss to the state, corruption by public officers and contravention of the Public Procurement Act.
The trial presided over by Justice Clemence Jackson Honyenuga, a justice of the Supreme Court sitting with additional responsibility as a High Court judge was adjourned to Wednesday, July 27 for Mr. Peter Okyere Boateng to continue with his evidence in chief.
