Voice Of Developing Communities (VODEC), has issue a call to Leaders of Ghana, especially Africa to develop policies that will lead the continent to a brighter future, by corruption not denying us from developing. Corruption is said to have been factors for the down fall of past regimes byway of undermining the legitimacy of the governments and weakening their structures, reducing productivity, hindering development, worsening poverty, marginalizing the poor, creating social unrest and then to their downfall.

Corruption undermines democracy and the rule of law leads to violation of human right, distorts market, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crimes, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish. Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development undermining a government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality, and injustice and foreign aid investment.

The effect of corruption has many dimensions related to political, economic, social and environmental effects. In political sphere, corruption impedes democracy and the rule of law. In a democratic system, public institutions and offices may lose their legitimacy when they misuse their power for private interest. Corruption may also result in negative consequences such as encoring cynicism and reducing interest of political participation , political instability , reducing political competition, reducing the transparency of political decision making, distorting political development and sustaining political activity based on patronage, clienteles and money, etc. In our society, the impact of corruption is often manifested through political intolerance, problems of accountability and transparency to the public, low level of democratic culture, principles of consultation and participation dialogue among others.

The economic effects of corruption can be categorized as minor and major. However, both in one way or the other have serious impact on the individual community and country.

First and foremost, corruption leads to the depletion of national wealth. It is often responsible for increased costs of goods and services, the funnelling of scarce public resources to uneconomic high profile projects at the expense of the much needed projects such as schools, hospitals and roads, or the supply of potable water, diversion and misallocate action of resources, conversion of public wealth to private and personal property, inflation, imbalanced economic development, weakling work ethics and professionalism, hindrance of the development of fair in market structures and unhealthy competition there by deterring competition. Large scale corruption hurts the economy and impoverishes entire population.

In Social sphere, corruption discourages people to work together for the common good. Frustration and general apathy among the public result in a weak civil society. Demanding and paying bribes becomes the tradition. It also results in social inequality and widened gap between the rich and poor, civil strife, increased poverty and lack of basic needs like food, water and drugs, jealousy and hatred and insecurity.

When we receive a report of possible corruption, our anti-corruption team makes an assessment and decides if the matter is best dealt with by the SFO or passed to one of our law enforcement partners. It is important to remember that the SFO's reporting process complements the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) regime in the regulated sector and we therefore encourage people to make appropriate reports. Corruption by its nature can be difficult to detect as it usually involve two or more people entering into a secret agreement. The agreement can be to pay a financial inducement to a public official for securing favor of some description in return.

bribery is giving or receiving something of value to influence a transaction, illegal gratuity - giving or receiving something of value after a transaction is completed, in acknowledgment of some influence over the transaction, extortion - demanding a sum of money (or goods) with a threat of harm (physical or business) if demands are not met, conflict of interest - where an employee has an economic or personal interest in a transaction, kickback - a portion of the value of the contract demanded as a bribe by an official for securing the contract, corporate espionage - theft of trade secrets, theft of intellectual property, or copyright piracy

This list is not exhaustive and the ingenuity of those involved in corruption knows no bounds! But you should beware of abnormal cash payments and pressure exerted for payments to be made urgently or ahead of schedule, payments being made through a third party country - for example, goods or services supplied to country 'A' but payment is being made, usually to a shell company in country 'B'.

For Ghana and Africa to be able to develop, we want great leaders who love the people enough and respect the people enough to tell the truth and also who are Selfless, Visionary, Committed, Proactive, Fearless, Radical, Strategic, to Participate, Tell, Sell, Delegate with Knowledge, Maturity, Values, Relationship, Task in Truth, Right, Loyalty and Usefulness.