No good returns in corruption fight in Ghana – Professor Kwesi Prempeh laments

The Executive Director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), Professor Henry Kwesi Prempeh says Ghana’s approach to fighting corruption has not yielded any good return.

The Office of the Special Prosecutor was established by President Akufo-Addo to help fight corruption but very little has been done in his two or so years in office.

Speaking on an Accra-based radio station monitored by MyNewsGh.com, Professor Henry Kwesi Prempeh said “historically, in the fourth republic or having a constitutional government, we [Ghana] have put all of our anti-corruption eggs in one basket which is the prosecution basket. So we have spent resources on prosecutorial bodies and various law enforcement agencies where there is a whole purpose of fighting corruption is to detect it, investigate it, charge culprits…if you can find them, gather evidence, launch prosecution and hopefully get a conviction.”

“If you look historically at the returns of that kind of investments, certainly in Ghana, no one really has to tell you we’ve had very little chaos in that approach in fighting corruption and there are a number of reasons for that”, he further said.

The legal luminary said the cumbersome approach in fighting corruption is the major bane to our quest to achieve results in fighting corruption.

“They are so many steps along the way, not all of which is controlled by one entity. So who does the investigation, the detection is often different from the prosecutor, who does the charges, the police? There are many different entities along the line and of course, it ends up with the judiciary.”

He pointed out that “the processes are also somewhat politically mediated at a different point. Even if you have a different OSP [Office of Special Prosecutor], you have the police that is different, you have a prosecutor and all of that. Essentially we haven’t had a good return in that approach in fighting corruption.”