The Fourth Estate snubs GJA/KGL Awards

The Fourth Estate has announced that its journalists named as finalists for the GJA/KGL Media Awards will decline the honours, describing the sponsorship arrangement with KGL as incompatible with its public-interest investigations.

In a publication on its website on Thursday, the media house said accepting the awards would “compromise our conscience,” given its recent exposés on what it calls a “state-fleecing” deal between the National Lottery Authority (NLA) and KGL Technology Limited.

The outlet said its investigations revealed that the previous NLA leadership granted KGL a licence that effectively ceded the authority’s most profitable operations to the private company.

According to The Fourth Estate, the deal enabled KGL to generate more than GHC3 billion from NLA operations while paying only GHC156.7 million to the state. It added that NLA’s contributions to the Consolidated Fund had dropped from GHC37 million in 2018 to “zero contribution for the last three consecutive years.”

The publication said the concerns were reinforced when the NLA’s current Director-General, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, reportedly confirmed before the Public Accounts Committee that the state could have earned far more from such an arrangement.

The Fourth Estate criticised what it described as “curious coincidences,” suggesting that the Ghana Journalists Association may be allowing itself to be used to undermine its reporting on the NLA-KGL matter. It cited a KGL-sponsored GJA event on October 9 during which KGL Executive Chairman Alex Appau Dadey dismissed its reportage as “irresponsible and sensational journalism.” According to the outlet, “We were hoping that the leadership of the GJA would deem it fit to openly correct the unfortunate attack…but that did not happen.”

It also questioned the rebranding of this year’s awards as the “GJA/KGL Media Awards,” saying it could not recall a recent instance where a corporate sponsor shared the title of the awards.

“Accepting such an award will be to benefit from the proceeds of the same terrible NLA-KGL deal that we have been exposing,” the news organisation stated.

The Fourth Estate extended best wishes to all other awardees but maintained that its decision reflects its commitment to independent and public-interest journalism.