A former Minister of Health, Alex Segbefia, has highlighted the significant differences in governance between the ruling New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress.
According to him, the NDC’s track record in addressing corruption-related issues far outweighs that of the ruling party.
Speaking on JoyNews PM Express on Thursday, October 24, 2024, Alex Segbefia, who is also the head of the NDC’s running mate campaign, supported his claims with the corruption index, which currently ranks Ghana 70 out of 180 countries with a score of 43 in 2023, indicating a high level of corruption in the country.
“I humbly put forward that our track record on issues of corruption is a lot better than the NPP. There’s a corruption index which is international. It's not anything that we do or any of the political parties are involved him and that index is clearly showing that with the performance of the NPP, our worst performance is their best performance.
“That’s an international target and it's got nothing to do with what we say or do and there are a number of things that have gone on with regards to corruption that creates a problem,” he said.
Background
Ghana has failed to make any progress in the fight against corruption in the past four years, a 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) report by Transparency International stated.
The report showed that Ghana scored 43 out of 100 and ranked 70th out of 180 countries in the 2023 corruption index.
This was the same score and rank that Ghana had in 2019, 2020, and 2021, indicating a lack of improvement in the perception of corruption in the country's public sector.
The CPI is a global corruption ranking that measures how corrupt each country's public sector is perceived to be by experts and business people.
A score of 0 means highly corrupt, while a score of 100 means very clean.
The report noted that Ghana scored 40 in 2017 and increased its score to 41 in 2018 and 42 in 2019, before stagnating at 43 from 2019 to 2023.
The report attributed Ghana's poor performance to the low levels of accountability, transparency, and integrity in the public sector, as well as the high incidence of bribery, nepotism, and impunity.
MAG/AE
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