Running mate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang has stated that whereas former President John Dramani Mahama prosecuted his appointees for corruption, President Akufo-Addo has failed to subject his appointees to similar course whenever such allegations are levelled against them.
Speaking at an interaction with officials of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of Transparency International, Prof Opoku-Agyemang said there should be established records of how leaders responded to allegations of corruption by way of prosecution.
She explained such records will engender competition among governments as they strive to outdo one another for who has a better record.
Prof Opoku-Agyemang argued that the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) rankings must be tied to the governments during which the rankings are done without the generalisations that often come with it.
“When we are talking about “operation sting”, it is not coming from nowhere. In our previous government, you saw our president prosecute his own. Has that continued? So you see when we get to a place where we say: “oh on the CPI, we are forty percent and so”. Please don’t generalise. Let’s know where we were at what time. Let’s that be a kind of incentive for parties, even to compete that “oh in my term, I was high”. But if you generalise that it is all of us, so we are all in this together, so you can relax. And that generalization, I think, is not helpful,” she said.
“So let us know who has been able to prosecute his own and who has not been,” she noted.
During former President John Mahama’s term as President, some key government appointees were prosecuted and jailed for engaging in corruption.
But President Akufo-Addo is yet to prosecute any of his appointees who have been allegedly embroiled in corruption.
He has regularly cleared them of the allegations of corruption.
