The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has disagreed with comments by an ex-Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) that the Mahama administration was far more corrupt than previously thought.

Prof Stephen Adei, while speaking at a Business Roundtable organised by Yamson and Associates in Accra on Wednesday 31 May, said: “Do you know why many people want to be politicians? It’s because that is the quickest way to get rich in this country.”

“We are yet to know the facts because we are not the investigators, but the types of things that are being revealed about the amount of corruption [are mind-boggling].”

He added: “You know, the last six months of Mahama’s regime, every month I gave a boom speech; it was not in support of NPP or anything. Why? Because I was convinced that they had reached a point whereby their continued being in office … [was] not good for Ghana.

“I talked about corruption once, and now looking back, even the little tips we are hearing means that it was far more than any one of us suspected. Never in our nation have we seen official hijacking [of the] state for private gain. And I hear that when you go and you say something is for GHS1 million, he says: ‘Please get away with your nonsense, go and make it GHS5million.’ Then once those to protect the money say go and make it five, he’ll give you GHS1 million, he will take GHS3 million and GHS1 million is for your original one.”

But reacting to these remarks in an interview with Class News on Wednesday, May 31, the Greater Accra regional chairman of the NDC, Joseph Ade Coker, said: “I totally disagree with him on his pronouncements.

“Corruption does not start with one person, it starts with all of us. If the car park attendant is going to ask you to pay before he gives you a parking space he is corrupt.

“The whole system in this country is built in a way such that corruption permeates every aspect of our fabric. Even President Kufuor said corruption started from the days of Adam.”