Ghana’s collective commitment to combating corruption is lacking, according to the Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng. Public sentiment and opposition to anti-corruption initiatives, he said, indicate that the country is not fully prepared for the fight.
Mr. Agyebeng talked about the inconsistencies in the public’s reaction to the enforcement of corruption during his speech at the Constitution Day Public Lecture, which had as its theme “A Few Good Men: Suppressing and Repressing Corruption and State Capture in Aid of Development.”
He complained that although most Ghanaians agree that fighting corruption is important, some groups actively work to weaken the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) and its mission.
He said:
“There have been attempts to discredit the principles of the office and its officers, unjustly attended by formidable resistance and push back. Often the attacks on the office and its principals are done by persons who are at the short end of investigation or prosecution, and the associates of such persons.
“The effect of the existential challenge confronting the OSP is that though the nation collectively acknowledges that we must fight corruption, yet there is also a section that the flagship agency designed, even if imperfectly, to fight corruption, is not needed and should be disbanded while others actively undermine it and its principal officers,” he stated.
According to him, this paradox creates an odd cycle in which the public complains both when the OSP acts and when it is thought to be inert.
“This has translated into a rather curious cycle; there is an outcry when the OSP acts and an outcry when it is seen as not acting. It is as if we do not know what we want. The situation in Ghana now appears to be like ‘we must fight corruption but we must not fight corruption, that is our state now,” Kissi Agyeben ended.
