Ghana’s fight against corruption under 4th Republic

The Ghanaian government has been marinated in corruption even before independence.

Most institutions that are challenged with the prevalence of corruption are the natural resource management, the judiciary, and the police services.

Many governments in power have effortlessly put systems in place to curb the ‘nation impoverishing’ menace but apparently, little progress has been made.

A study by IMANI (a think tank based in the country) found that Ghana loses more than US $3 billion a year to corruption. It has also been asserted that the political leaders in government who are tirelessly working hard to curb the menace are also its perpetrators.

This makes the issue of corruption a hard nut to break; even though in doing so, the Ghanaian socio-economic condition would improve significantly, and the citizens would enjoy a better quality of life. Here is an introspection into the past three presidents of the Republic of Ghana, corruption scandals during their tenure of office, and actions taken towards solving the problem.

John Agyekum Kufuor 7 (January 2001 to 7 January 2009)

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor was sworn into office in January 2001 and served as president for the next eight years. His government also faced the challenge of corruption. In his first year in office, the Minister of Finance reported of ghost names on the public payroll that caused great financial loss to the state. The amount was estimated to be about 300 billion Ghana cedis.

Ex-president Kufuor’s comment about corruption; “Corruption was as old as Adam” caused a national uproar. To the citizens, his statement was his way of endorsing the act.

He, however, justified his statements at the DreamOval Thoughts Transfer Series by saying, “… And so; when anybody tells you that corruption was there from Adam, that person is not really endorsing corruption; no. The person is rather reminding you to go back to history and see how your forebear Adam fell so you become wiser not to go that way.”

Again in Kufuor’s administration, the Centre for Justice and Accountability highlighted lack of Ministerial public accountability. There was a prevalence of corruption and maladministration.

According to the CJA, there was corruption in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), and the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing. In 2005, the CJA listed eight ministries under Kufuor’s administration that lost the public’s 440,814,014,679 cedis largely due to corruption.

The daughter of J.K Busia, Ama Frema Busia, who was an NPP supporter during Kufuor’s administration publicly asserted that the basic principles governing his administration were greed and corruption.

The then-president, Kufuor, however, introduced several anti-corruption initiatives like; the E-governance programme, Improved procurement act, and transparency bills such as the Whistleblower bill.

The E-governance programme focused on facilitating the effective delivery of government services to the general public, and to also provide good government-wide electronic means of sharing information and knowledge through a network infrastructure developed to connect major towns and cities, Ministries, Departments and agencies; and other public sector organizations in Ghana.

The Whistleblower bill is a call to the citizenry to expose any information or activity that is illegal or unethical within both public and private organizations. The Whistleblower is being protected under a number of laws.

Kufuor’s administration improved Ghana’s Public Procurement Law, ACT 663. The public procurement entails rules, methods and processes by which institutions in government are mandated by the law to use to acquire goods, services, and works using public funds.

In one of former president Kufuor’s recent speeches on corruption at Accra’s Annual Leadership Lecture on 12th December 2018, he said, “Another major global expectation of national leaderships is a vigorous fight against corruption. Indeed, it is very instructive to note that frequently quoted global estimates of the cost of corruption is that more than 5% of global GDP, or approximately US$ 2.6 trillion, is lost to corruption each year around the world. It is further reported by the ONE Campaign that an estimated US$1 trillion flows out of developing countries each year through a web of corrupt activities including illegal tax evasion, money laundering, use of shell companies, and shady deals in natural resources exploitation. And, there is a substantial body of research regarding the macroeconomic effects of corruption which indicates that, overall, corruption has a serious negative effect on economic growth. Not only these, there is also a reported correlation between higher levels of corruption and increased inequality, and, in turn, higher levels of poverty. The international community therefore seriously frowns on corruption and enjoins all governments to intensify the fight against this menace. Indices such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index are thus used to gauge the level of corruption in different countries.”

The late Prof. John Evans Atta Mills. (January 2009 – 2012)

The late former president, John Evans Atta Mills who passed away while in power also faced the challenge of corruption in his short-lived administration. In 2009, barely a year after he assumed office, the functionaries of his party, the NDC was alleged to have received at least one million dollars in bribery payments from the TAQA, a United Arab Emirates-based majority shareholder of the Aboadze thermal plant. TAQA paid millions of dollars bribes to politicians in the energy sector so they could triple the outputs of the Takoradi Power Station.

Atta Mill’s administration was also accused of inflating project costs and paying the surplus money to the NDC government officials. An example is the inflation of the cost of building a six classroom block to 260,000 Ghana cedis. Also, the 10 billion STX housing project is alleged to have been inflated to as much as 40% in his administration. References were made to his then Vice President, John Mahama as one of the bad nuts in his administration.

Atta Mills in his bid to fight corruption, assigned ace investigative journalist; Anas Aremeyaw Anas to investigate and report on corrupt officials within government institutions, specifically the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

John Dramani Mahama (24th July 2012 – 7th January 2017)

John Mahama took over as president after the painful demise of the Late Ex-president John Evans Atta Mills in 2012. His administration was one of the most highly criticized in Ghana’s political history.

Under his administration, four giant supporters of his party were arrested and charged with corruption in a court in Accra. One of the corrupt officials was Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who was charged with robbing the state of 51m Ghana cedis.

Also charged were Chief Attorney Samuel Nerquaye- Tetteh, his wife and the finance ministry’s legal director for aiding a crime.

In 2010, President Mahama, as the vice president of the late Atta Mills secretly wrote to the Pierson Capital Group, where he took steps to commit Ghana to international loan exposures without the knowledge of President Mills. He denied the letter as a forgery and lamely admitted he wrote it after there were threats of a CID investigation.

These allegations made the citizenry put a keen eye on his administration.

The numerous allegations of corruption against Mahama’s administration made him take some anti-corruption initiatives. He brought about the publication of code of ethics for government appointees in 2013.

The code of ethics contains information that makes all public officials know the situations/conducts that could cause them to lose their jobs, and it covers the issue of corruption.

John Mahama also embarked on the ‘Accounting to the people tour’ and Anti-corruption summits organized by the UK government. He made some statements about the Anti-corruption summit: “The London summit provides an opportunity to demonstrate once again the measures we have been adopting to strengthen our fight against corruption, combat money laundering and counter the financing of terrorism”.

However, his largely criticized government in cases of corruption in office contributed enormously to his downfall in the 2016 general elections. Read Full Story