The Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh and his predecessor Dr Bernard Okoe Boye have disagreed over whether a contractor under the $100 million national e-health project was overpaid or simply given an advance, after both men offered conflicting interpretations of the same financial records.
At a Public Accounts Committee hearing on Thursday, October 30, 2025, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh accused his predecessor, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, of approving an overpayment to Lightwave e-Healthcare Solutions Limited.
Reading from a document attributed to the former minister, Mr Akandoh said: “He [Boye] said an unutilised advance of $10.6 million yet to be expended by the vendor, and he is the one who paid this. Why should you be talking?”
Mr Akandoh argued that paying contractors before they deliver work amounts to overpayment.
“This is not a prepayment procedure. You pay as and when you execute the job. So if you are paid more than the work you have done, you have been overpaid,” he told the committee.
In contrast, Dr Okoe Boye, in a statement issued the same morning and titled "The LHIMS Controversy: A Case of Giving the Dog a Bad Name to Hang It", he described the same $10.6 million as an “unutilised advance” rather than an overpayment.
“As of December 2024, reconciliation showed an unutilised advance of $10.6 million yet to be expended by the vendor,” Dr Okoe Boye wrote, warning that replacing Lightwave could lead to losses of up to $50 million in public funds.
Both ministers agree that Lightwave has so far received $76.99 million, with $23 million still outstanding from the original $100 million contract signed in March 2019.
They also acknowledge that more than 450 health facilities have been digitised under the project.
Their disagreement is on the extent of work completed and data ownership.
Mr Akandoh told the committee that only seven out of 157 facilities under the third milestone had been verified, despite an $11 million payment.
Dr Okoe Boye, in his statement, said 461 facilities were covered, including four teaching hospitals, six regional hospitals, and 243 district and municipal hospitals.
On data ownership, Mr Akandoh told the committee that “the software doesn’t belong to the state. It is his [contractor] property,” describing the matter as “a national security issue.”
Dr Okoe Boye countered that Lightwave is a Ghanaian company and that “data ownership has always rested with the Republic of Ghana,” explaining that each health facility has its own local servers where patient data is stored.
The dispute has disrupted the country’s health information system.
Mr Akandoh revealed that the system has been offline for the past two weeks, forcing hospitals to revert to paper records and affecting National Health Insurance card verification.
He defended the ministry’s decision to develop a new Ghana Health Information Management System (GHIMS), saying the move became necessary after the vendor allegedly refused to provide data access unless some clauses were removed from a proposed maintenance agreement.
“Mr Chairman, we were not dealing with a reasonable human being,” Mr Akandoh told the committee.
Dr Okoe Boye dismissed the new GHIMS project as “not a state-owned entity but a private company, like Lightwave,” claiming it had digitised fewer than five facilities and lacked a nationwide pilot.
He urged the Chief of Staff to step in, warning that abandoning a system after investing over $73 million and training more than 150,000 health workers would amount to “gross financial waste.”
The disagreement has raised questions about contract management, procurement procedures, and the future of Ghana’s digital health records system.
When asked by committee members to clarify whether the vendor had been overpaid, Mr Akandoh maintained his position. “That impression should not be created as though saying this doesn’t mean overpayment,” he said.
The committee requested a copy of Dr Okoe Boye’s statement for its records.
The issue remains unresolved, with both sides claiming to act in Ghana’s best interest while accusing the other of mismanaging the project.
