“A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses” goes that Chinese proverb that says people who do good to others benefit indirectly.
For a free giver like Alhaji Seidu Agongo, that fragrance and goodness is life itself.
The business magnate who started his sojourn as a shoeshine boy knows and feels the pains of others’ poverty in his bones. He came from there and has vowed never to let others suffer that pain, so long as he can help it.
He is a friend to widows and orphans, the sick and the rejected, those abandoned and those living with disabilities. Indeed, he just about anybody on the vulnerability spectrum.
For many who have encountered or heard about his philanthropy, his name is synonymous with generosity, charity, and free giving. And he does without talking, behind the scenes and without showing up.
However, despite the secrecy of those good works, they eventually get to the public arena, mostly through the beneficiaries who will talk about their blessings from a man so calm and humble to their friends and family.
And such unbridled gratitude is the fragrance left on a giver like Alhaji Seidu Agongo, whose charitable reputation goes before him. And they cut across the cross section of society.
Your favourite koko or waakye spot may not have existed but for his charity. That exceptional doctor and surgeon might not have made it to medical school but for Alhaji Agongo’s intervention and sponsorship; that smart young lawyer who helped you to successfully fight your case in court might have ended up wasted had Alhaji Agongo’s helping hand been missing in his or her life; and I’m sure some of you reading this article may have tasted his generosity in one life-saving way or the other.
Apart from his uncountable anonymous charity works and generosity, there are some that, by their mere nature, caught the attention of the media or were powered through those platforms for greater and wider reach.
BUILDING OPD WARD FOR KORLE BU CHILD EMERGENCY UNIT
In 2018, the Muslim philanthropist constructed an Out-Patient Department (OPD) block at a cost of GH¢857,000 for the Child Emergency Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (K’Bu) in Accra.
He handed the 30-bed capacity block to the Hospital in 2019.
Alhaji Agongo decided to build the block after visiting the hospital in 2017 to console one of his secretaries who lost her baby at facility and witnessed how newborn babies and their mothers were packed into a small, congested space with some of them making do with the bare floor due to the congestion. He said he saw four babies sharing a cot meant for one, which really got to him.
Such is his fellow-feeling and humanity.
He said upon enquiry, he was told that the unit had space limitation. “One officer, Dr Otoo, jokingly asked if I was going to build them a new block and we all laughed over it,” he said. He said he later contacted the unit formally and requested to construct an additional block for the unit and land was provided for it.
He explained that he was from humble beginnings and had to strive often to ensure that his God-given successes impacted others positively in whatever small way he could.
SCHOLARSHIPS FOR BRILLIANT-BUT-NEEDY PUPILS & STUDENTS
The management of St. Paul’s Lutheran School, in 2019, presented a citation to Alhaji Agongo for adopting and sponsoring 17 pupils there over the past few years.
The 17 were among 81 pupils Alhaji Agongo adopted almost 10 years ago and sponsored from the basic to the university level.
Realising that education was the only means by which he could help end the cycle of poverty in the families of poor pupils, Alhaji Agongo decided to move his own children from Al-Rayan International School, where he was spending about $5,000 on each child, at the time, to the St. Paul’s Lutheran School near the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) in Accra, so that he could use the savings he made on his children’s school fees, to sponsor the 81 poor pupils up to the university level.
Presenting the citation to Mr Agongo at a PTA meeting on Wednesday, 27 February 2019, Mrs Fatimah Carol Yamusah, the Admissions Coordinator of St. Paul’s Lutheran School, expressed gratitude to the Muslim businessman for his care for the less-privileged in society and his many philanthropic works and encouraged him to continue his good deeds, especially his scholarship offers to help needy children get a good education and foundation in life.
The citation read: “For your outstanding contribution towards the admission drive of St. Paul’s Lutheran School, it is with great pleasure that the management of the school would like to honour you for your exceptional initiative and tangible impact”.
“You do this unobtrusively and efficiently without bringing attention to yourself. You certainly have set a fine example of reliability, dependability and commitment”. “You do not speak of the people you help or the crisis you have diffused in the lives you have touched. Your religion is no barrier to your compassion for all. You are a person who shows selfless dedication to others and believes in promoting academic excellence in the lives of every young person you have encountered. Mr Agongo is without question a most deserving recipient of this honour.”
In November 2019, one hundred talented-but-needy hairdressers and seamstresses/tailors benefited from the third edition of Class Media Group’s ‘Founder’s Empowerment Project’ held in Kumasi, Ashanti Region. Class Media Group is a Ghanaian media conglomerate which operates Class91.3FM, Accra100.5FM, No.1 105.3FM, Kumasi 104.1FM, Adehyee 99.1FM, Ho FM, Sunyani FM, Taadi FM, Dagbon FM, CTV, and ClassFMonline.com.
It is founded by Alhaji Agongo, who decided to use the power and wide reach of his media empire, to positively impact the lives of the poor across the country.
Fifty hairdryers and 50 sewing machines were given to the beneficiaries in Kumasi. Alhaji Agongo initiated the philanthropic programme with the aim to equip underprivileged artisans, including apprentices, who do not have the financial means to set up their own businesses, so that they can be independent.
The Kumasi charity event followed a similar donation of the first set of 86 hairdryers and sewing machines to a similar profile of people in the Greater Accra Region.
Also, some 31 underprivileged seamstresses/tailors and hairdressers including two people living with disability, benefited from the second edition at an event held on 25 November 2019 at the forecourt of the Ho Central Market.
The project was replicated across the country.
The ‘Founder’s Empowerment Project’ adds to the numerous charity programmes of CMG that the group uses to support the less-privileged in society.
CMG organises the annual Celebrity Easter Funfair and donations to orphans in the Greater Accra Region. The Group also makes a yearly GHS50,000 donation to single mothers, all with the sponsorship of Alhaji Agongo.
DISTRIBUTING MOBILE MONEY TO 10,000 WIDOWS, SINGLE MOTHERS DURING COVID LOCKDOWN
In the heady days of the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana in 2020, Alhaji Agongo, in an attempt to mitigate the impact of a three-week partial lockdown in Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi, launched an e-charity programme through which he disbursed cash to some 10,000 widows, single mothers and the underprivileged across the country through mobile money platforms.
It was to his little support to help them to cope with the financial challenges that the pandemic brought.
His intervention benefitted more than 4,600 widows, single mothers and other less-privileged people in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions in April.
Alhaji Agongo, who said helping the poor makes him feel human, explained that although his initial target was to support 600 people through the intervention, he had to revise the figure upward after noticing that many people were going through financial difficulties, as a result of the partial lockdown.
He said he reached this conclusion after his radio stations that were advertising the support scheme got inundated with calls far beyond the numbers that were projected.
As a result, he said he revised the initial target to 10,000 people.
The support programme, Alhaji Agongo noted, was christened the ‘CMG MoMo for Lockdown’ and implemented in association with his Class Media Group (CMG).
People who were disadvantaged, he explained, were encouraged to call telephone numbers advertised on the group’s 10 radio stations, a television station and an online portal in Accra, Kumasi, Tamale, Takoradi and Ho to give their personal and mobile money details and their economic conditions.
A group of people then vetted the information and those found to be authentic received the money.
The amount sent to the beneficiaries, he noted, varied from person to person, taking into consideration the individual’s situation and the number of children, among others.
“What matters in life is the impact you make in peoples’ lives. Different people are making impact in different ways but everybody and his choice; my choice is the widows, the single mothers, the underprivileged children and also to create employment,” he said.
ESSENCE OF GIVING
Alhaji Agongo sees philanthropy as a way to share the blessings of God with those in need.
“Islam teaches about giving but I go beyond Islam.”
“What I believe is that life has realities and be it the Bible or the Quran, the holy books tell us that you will be judged according to your own deeds.
“So, I believe that whatever blessings God has blessed me with, God knows why He has blessed me with that and, of course, God will also know the fact that the blessing he gave me, I did not utilise the blessing alone; I also tried to bless others,” he explained.
Alhaji Agongo, who held the most significant shares of the now-defunct Heritage Bank Limited, which was collapsed in 2019, said: “To be very honest with you, I just don’t get up and do anything. And with everything I do, I want it to make an impact on peoples’ lives”.
He continued: “We have a lockdown, and all those kids we see selling in traffic, all those mothers we see selling on tabletops, they are doing that to earn a living … They earn a living on a daily basis, hand-to-mouth, to feed their family; so, if the mother is sick today, you’d realise that the whole family can even go hungry; everybody will struggle because the hand that feeds the family is not well, so, on that basis I decided that; ‘Let me see how best I can identify the single mothers, widows, the needy, through your platform, the Class Media Group, and send them MoMo”.
“Somebody might need money to buy kerosene, somebody might need money to buy water, somebody needs money to do so many things based on his or her priority”, he noted.
Such philanthropic activities, he said, give him a lot of gratification.
“Islam teaches about giving but I go beyond Islam”, Alhaji Agongo said, explaining: “What I believe is that life has realities and be it the Bible or the Quran, the holy books tell us that you’ll be judged according to your own deeds, so, I believe that whatever blessings God has blessed me with, God knows why He has blessed me with that and, of course, God will also know the fact that the blessing he gave me, I didn’t utilise the blessing alone; I also tried to bless others. So, basically, that is what makes me feel human”.
Asked why he loves helping widows, single mothers and children the most, the businessman replied: “I don’t know whether you’ve ever examined a war in any country, Liberia or wherever; it is the women and children that suffer. The men don’t suffer”.
“Men, sometimes, don’t even care about the kids and wife but, of course, a woman will carry a baby for nine months, she’s even at work and she’s thinking about the kid, and that is how God created women, so, I’ve always realised that ones you help a woman, you’re helping a lot of people because like it or not, if you give a woman money, she’ll prepare food for the husband and kids and everybody will eat”.
“A woman will see how best she can manage the home with whatever you give her to make sure that the house functions, so, personally, I’ve been so much into widows, single parents and kids. Kids because, as a nation, if we want to kill poverty, once you invest in old people you’re not killing poverty but once you invest in kids: into their education, the same kids will become doctors, lawyers, businessmen and there is a multiplier effect because once the kid becomes a businessman like me, he’ll assist people, assist the family and the family will cut poverty at a particular level. So, that is what I believe. So, giving money to widows, single parents is to help them to invest in their kids so as to break the poverty cycle”, Mr Agongo said, as he philosophised: “You came into this world alone and you’ll leave alone. You came into this world empty and you’ll leave this world empty”.
SEIDU AGONGO EMPOWERS HO TRADERS WITH BUSINESS SUPPORT
In early July this year, Alhaji Agongo, once again, extended his support to petty traders in Ho, Volta Region, providing them with invaluable business advice, guidance on record-keeping, and capital to enhance their ventures.
The beneficiaries of this initiative, including widows and single mothers engaged in various petty trading activities such as the selling of sachet water, eggs, roasted plantain/yam, charcoal, toffee, cola nuts, Aliha, and Dzowoe, expressed their heartfelt gratitude for the support they have received.
During a brief ceremony hosted at the premises of Ho 92.5 FM, a subsidiary of CMG, Dr Richard Akplotsi, representing Alhaji Seidu Agongo, delivered an inspiring speech, urging the recipients to utilise the funds judiciously to expand their businesses and provide for the education and well-being of their children.
Alhaji Seidu Agongo emphasised his unwavering commitment to empowering individuals in the communities where his business ventures are established. Acknowledging the challenging economic conditions faced by many, he assured that tailored support would be provided in the future to meet the needs of those who were not selected this time.
“I firmly believe that the path to success begins by taking the first step. Our businesses will flourish when more people engage in productive ventures,” stated visionary philanthropist.
The initiative received an overwhelming response, with over 400 applications submitted for the support programme. Out of these, 63 applicants met the stringent selection criteria and were chosen as beneficiaries. The programme’s primary aim is to uplift and empower individuals, particularly those facing economic hardships.
ALHAJI AGONGO OFFERS TO HELP FELLOW BANK OWNER PRINCE KOFI AMOABENG
Despite his focus on helping the poor and vulnerable, Alhaji Agongo also extends assistance to people who may have fallen from grace to grass due to circumstances that may have connived against them unjustly.
In October 2022, UT Bank founder Prince Kofi Amoabeng expressed gratitude to Alhaji Agongo for being the only Ghanaian who offered to assist him after a selfie of him wearing a scruffy beard with a sad face went viral on social media and got Ghanaians rumouring that he was now a pauper on the verge of death following the collapse of his bank.
Speaking to Nana Otu Darko on CTV’s breakfast show, Dwabre Mu, on Tuesday, 4 October 2022, Mr Amoabeng said the only reason he accepted an invitation to appear on that show was because the station belonged to Mr Agongo’s Class Media Group.
“Actually, the reason why I couldn’t say no to your invitation was because of his [Seidu Agongo’s] personality,” Mr Amoabeng told Nana Otu Darko, adding: “I’ve never set eyes on him but at some point in time, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I started wearing this beard and I took a picture of myself and I posted it on [social media] and that set tongues wagging that ‘I was on the verge of death’, ‘I’m now a pauper’, but the boss of this place [CMG], Seidu Agongo, sent me a WhatsApp message that if I’m in difficulty, I should send him my account number for him to give me some money.”
“Of course, I didn’t pursue it but I’m ever so grateful that, at least, one Ghanaian thought that ‘instead of laughing at him, let me help’,” he noted.
BANK OF GHANA WAS ORDERED TO COLLAPSE AGONGO’S HERITAGE BANK
In that same interview, Mr Amoabeng said the Bank of Ghana was told by officialdom to collapse Mr Agongo’s Heritage Bank Limited.
Mr Amoabeng, whose bank was also collapsed in the first term of the Akufo-Addo government, told Nana Otu Darko that: “I was pained by the collapse of Heritage Bank because it was young.”
“The Bank of Ghana had issued a licence to Heritage Bank and Heritage Bank had not operated for long and, so, unlike UT Bank, it had no bad loans or anything and it was a wholly-owned Ghanaian company that we had to nurture to grow,” he explained.
“Secondly, the owners of Heritage Bank found it fit to appoint a solid board,” he noted, adding: “I mean, the chairman was [Prof] Kwesi Botchwey. When it comes to finance in this country, he is the safest hands you can get; he’s seen it all.”
“As chairman, the board members run the bank, not the owner, so, I don’t know Seidu Agongo – as I told you, I haven’t met him before – but I know Kwesi Botchwey and I know his track record. So, if you have a bank that hasn’t got any baggage, it’s fresh and it’s got a board headed by Kwesi Botchwey, then it means its closure was a worse decision than UT Bank’s,” he further noted.
“As for UT Bank, we owed and they could have bailed [us out] but decided not to bail; that’s an option. That is why I mentioned that Heritage Bank, for example, was collapsed out of sheer wickedness,” he added.
Mr Amoabeng observed that the “unfortunate thing is, the Bank of Ghana is supposed to be independent but I don’t think they were independent with their decision on Heritage Bank because, if they were independent, why do you issue a licence and withdraw it?”
“When you were issuing the licence, didn’t you know the owners and the board?” he asked.
“It means they were told to withdraw the licence,” he deducted.
“And it’s not a fair way but it’s another dangerous path that Ghana has taken,” he regretted, noting: “Every institution has been politicised including even the army.”
“And that is why I am saying that for Heritage Bank, the institution that is supposed to be independent of the government, even though in principle, issues a licence and then withdraws that licence when the company hasn’t even done anything wrong,” Mr Amoabeng added.
Mr Amoabeng made similar comments some years prior, saying he found it “extremely odd” for the Bank of Ghana to have collapsed Heritage Bank Limited, which had no bad loans on its books and was being run by the “right people” within the industry.
In his view, the revocation of the licence of the Ghanaian-owned bank, whose founder, Mr Agongo, has always argued, was above board, as far as its books were concerned, was not only politically motivated but also “extremely unfair and unfortunate.”
Asked directly by TV3’s Paa Kwesi Asare in an interview on Business Focus: ‘Do you think, as many think, that some of the decision to close down certain banks was politically motivated?’ Mr Amoabeng answered: “A few of them; specifically Heritage Bank.”
“I don’t understand the issue because the Chairman of the Board is Dr Kwesi Botchwey. I have a lot of respect for him when it comes to finance in this country and managing Boards and he will not, in my estimation, ever accept to be Chairman of a bank that is not right and dealing in all sorts of things. I can say that for him,” Mr Amoabeng, whose bank, along with eight others, were collapsed in the central bank’s financial clean-up exercise in President Nana Akufo-Addo’s first term of office, noted.
“So,” Mr Amoabeng noted, “I find it extremely odd that a bank – and it had not started doing business for it to have bad loans and all those things – and for you to say that the owner didn’t have what it takes [doesn’t meet the fit-and-proper criterion] or however they put it, I mean the owner doesn’t run the bank, he’s a Ghanaian, he’s got the money, he’s appointed the right people to run the bank for him, so, what is the excuse?”
“I find that extremely, extremely unfair,” Mr Amoabeng asserted, adding: “Maybe I don’t have all the facts, but from where I stand, I find it really unfortunate.”
The Bank of Ghana revoked Heritage Bank’s licence on Friday, 4 January 2019, on the basis that Mr Agongo, the majority shareholder, among other things, used proceeds realised from alleged fraudulent contracts he executed for the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), for which he has been facing prosecution together with former COCOBOD CEO Stephen Opuni, for the past four years.
Announcing the withdrawal of the licence, the Governor of the central bank, Dr Ernest Addison, told journalists – when asked if he did not deem the action as premature, since the COCOBOD case was still in court – that: “The issue of Heritage Bank, I wanted to get into the law with you, I don’t know if I should, but we don’t need the court’s decision to take the decisions that we have taken.
We have to be sure of the sources of capital to license a bank; if we have any doubt, if we feel that it’s suspicious, just on the basis of that, we find that that is not acceptable as capital. We don’t need the court to decide for us whether anybody is ‘fit and proper’. Just being involved in a case that involves a criminal procedure makes you not fit and proper”.
However, Mr Agongo responded with a press statement in which he said that the “not fit and proper” tag stamped on him by the central bank was “capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad faith.”
According to Mr Agongo, “In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction,” adding that: “The fact that I have a case pending before the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be determined by the Honourable Court.”
“The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible evidence?” Mr Agongo asked.
Also, the erstwhile Prof Botchwey Board issued a statement on the matter in which it said: “Heritage Bank was by the Bank of Ghana’s own admission, a solvent bank. It never received liquidity support from the Bank of Ghana. Its corporate governance record had never been impugned by the Bank of Ghana. We believe we have been done a grave injustice and a terrible precedent set that does not bode well for the future.”
“I APPRECIATE YOUNG SEIDU AGONGO AND WANT TO SEE HIM DO GREAT THINGS; IT WAS PAINFUL HIS BANK WENT DOWN” – KWEKU BAAKO
In August 2020, the Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako, said he appreciates Alhaji Agongo and wants to see him succeed.
Kweku Baako, thus, said he was pained a lot when the simple and unassuming hard-working businessman’s Heritage Bank was collapsed by the Bank of Ghana. “He [Agongo] is a young man and I appreciated him and I want to see a young man like him who does great things”, adding: “It was painful his bank went down”.
Similarly, Kweku Baako expressed qualms about the central bank’s collapse of uniBank and GN Bank, which, respectively belonged to the former Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Kwabena Duffuor and former presidential candidate Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom.
“I felt for the three banks: Nduom’s bank [GN Bank], Heritage Bank that belongs to that young man, Seidu Agongo (because of his extension into radio, we met a couple of times in 2014 and 2015) and Dr Duffuor’s bank [uniBank]”, he said on Accra-based Peace FM’s Kokrokoo morning show.
“The same with uniBank”, he said. “I will tell [you] honestly; Dr Duffuor is a personal friend but the action taken against the banks was not right”, he added.
Kweku Baako is not the first to have spoken against the collapse of Heritage Bank, in particular.
AGONGO’S REBUTTAL TO BANK OF GHANA
Following the Bank of Ghana’s claim that Mr Agongo failed the ‘fit and proper’ test, the buisnessman responded with a press statement in which he said that the “not fit and proper” tag stamped on him by the central bank was “capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad faith”.
According to Mr Agongo, “In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction”, adding that: “The fact that I have a case pending before the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be determined by the Honourable Court”.
“The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible evidence?” Mr Agongo asked.
Also, the erstwhile Prof Botchwey Board issued a statement on the matter in which it said: “Heritage Bank was by the Bank of Ghana’s own admission, a solvent bank. It NEVER received liquidity support from the Bank of Ghana. Its corporate governance record had never been impugned by the Bank of Ghana. We believe we have been done a grave injustice and a terrible precedent set that does not bode well for the future”.
Alhaji Agongo is currently being prosecuted by the state for an alleged fraudulent sale of fertiliser to Ghana Cocoa Board during the tenure of Dr Stephen Opuni.
The two of them have pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts and are on self-recognisance bail. The case has been in court for five years now. It is currently in the hands of a third judge, after the first one, Justice Clemence Honyenuga retired, and the second one, Justice Anokye Gyimah, got transferred after deciding to start the case de novo.
The new judge, Justice Aboagye Tandoh, first sat on the case on Wednesay, 12 July 2023 following the overturning of the de-novo decision of Justice Gyimah by the Court of Appeal.
This means the case is to continue from where Justice Honyenuga left off.
The defence team has filed an appeal at the Supreme Court, challenging the Court of Appeal decision.
However, the criminal prosecution and the collapse of Heritage Bank has not daunted Alhaji Agongo’s charitable and giving spirit, as he continues to help the poor and most vulnerable in society whenever he has the means to do so.
Perhaps, the fragrance of his free-giving heart, would be freedom and peace of mind to keep giving to those who need it most.
