Economist Stephen Adei has said there is “too much” corruption under the Akufo-Addo administration.
The former Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), however, contrasted that the situation was worse under the Mahama administration.
“The statistics, the evidence from Transparency International show that corruption has gone up too much”, he told Kwame Obeng Sarkodie on Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom on Thursday, 7 April 2022.
“Per their corruption perception index, we are currently hovering around 41, 42 per cent”.
“It is too much”, the former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) said while mimicking the typical Nigerian accent, but quickly added, “It was worse under Mahama”.
In his view, “it has improved a bit under Akufo-Addo but I don’t think it has improved enough to make Ghanaians feel comfortable”.
“So, if they don’t intensify the fight against corruption, we’ll not get anywhere with it”, Prof Adei noted.
Last year, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s office described as “thoughtless loose” talk, a similar claim by Prof Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Afrobarometer Network, who said his [the President’s] anti-corruption credibility was in “tatters” and, indeed, “has been in tatters for a while”.
Condemning the President’s forceful retirement of Auditor-General Daniel Yaw Domelevo, Prof Gyimah-Boadi said in an interview at the time: “I see Domelevo as a victim of well-orchestrated actions by individuals who are officials and by state institutions”.
As far as he was concerned, “Mr Domelevo was exercising proper constitutional and legal oversight and officials and institutions that Mr Domelevo has sought to hold to account”.
“The man was doing his best to protect the public purse to claim surcharges for improperly spent public funds. One who is trying to fight corruption is one who is being persecuted and hounded out of office,” he noted.
In a response to the anti-corruption CSOs on the Domelevo issue, however, the President said he found it “very disappointing to hear a very senior and otherwise distinguished member of civil society make such loose and thoughtless statements like the President’s credibility on anti-corruption is in ‘tatters’ and ‘has been in tatters for a while’ and that the compulsory retirement of Mr Domelevo puts the nail in the coffin of the President’s credibility”.
“Such statements are not based on facts and driven likely by emotions”, the Presidency said, adding: “The fact is that the President’s credibility on anti-corruption is unmatched and no amount of misconceived opinions can change that”, the letter signed by the President’s Executive Secretary, Nana Asante Bediatuo, said.
In the view of the Presidency, the silence of the CSOs on Mr Domelevo’s “unacceptable and unconscionable conduct” in office left much to desire.
“It is noteworthy that no sound of caution or condemnation was heard from you or your colleagues in civil society when Mr Domelevo was using his office to engage in such unacceptable and unconscionable conduct. Indeed, a less charitable perspective would be that this was a patent abuse of office. Yet, there was no chatter from our friends of Civil Society,” the statement added.
According to the President, “never had he held the view that the work of Mr Domelevo was embarrassing his government”.
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