Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, has urged Ghanaians to remain patient as government conducts detailed investigations into alleged financial irregularities related to the District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP) equipment procurement.

Speaking during the Government Accountability Series on October 22, Dr. Ayine said the investigations are uncovering serious cases of over-invoicing and misuse of funds under the programme.

“We noticed that the DRIP equipment were over invoiced by between 100 to 300%,” he disclosed.

He explained that the discrepancies involved inflated pricing of equipment across several districts.

“For example, one piece of equipment cost 40,000 dollars, but the government paid 84,000 dollars for that equipment — that’s an over invoice of more than 110%,” he said.

According to the Attorney-General, the scale of the review is significant, with hundreds of pieces of equipment being scrutinised.

“We are now diligently looking through all the equipment, and you can imagine, for all the districts there were hundreds of pieces of equipment,” he said.

Dr. Ayine stressed that the process must be thorough in order to withstand legal scrutiny.

“We’re going through each one of them because we are looking at a criminal investigation, and in criminal law charges must be specific,” he noted.

He added, “If you miss the element of specificity your case will be thrown out.”

The Attorney-General assured that his office is committed to pursuing justice but stressed that building airtight cases takes time.

“That is why I keep urging Ghanaians to be patient because we need diligent investigations so that when I send a case to court, we don’t have any doubt that criminality has occurred,” he said.

Dr. Ayine reaffirmed government’s commitment to accountability and ensured justice for perpetrators.