Opinions of Saturday, 2 December 2017

Columnist: Peter Suaka

The corrupt cannot fight corruption!

President Akufo-Addo has vowed to deal with corruption in the country President Akufo-Addo has vowed to deal with corruption in the country

We can always hope for the best, but the reality is inevitable and we live with the reality not hopes. Making hopeful pronouncements in beautiful speeches is good but you shall be judged by the reality and not by your tantalizing hopeful pronouncements.

The NPP has constantly demonstrated obvious weakness in their fight against corruption since they took over the administration of this country. You don’t fight corruption with your mouth; you do it with actions using available state apparatus. A minister of state resigned over a ghc3.5m bus branding scandal, she was investigated by her own government and the monies retrieved and paid back into government chest by his own government under the president who appointed her. That is leadership! That is good governance! You do it you don’t say it! You fight corruption from within your own, not by mouth but by deeds.

We now have a president who has trumpeted his incorruptibility over the years and won power on the back of that helplessly watch his appointees engage in scandals costing the nation over ghc7m and nothing is happening to them. You find a minister defending her decision to appoint her brother as the administrator of a secretariat which is perpetrating the stealing of this ghc7m and the state apparatus is mute about it. What again will a president act on?

Who appointed Hon Elizabeth Afoley Quaye as Fisheries Minister? Who is she accountable to? Who supervised the appointment of her brother into the same ministry? Does this government understand the concept of conflict of interest at all?? Is the president not aware that these two individuals; a minister of state and her brother are presiding over the diversion of over 200 tracks of premix fuel within 2017 alone costing the country over ghc7m? Why should Ghanaians even listen to this same president make pronouncements such as “I am committed to fighting against corruption”? Do we fight corruption with “hopes” and beautiful scripts??

The president will keep reading beautiful scripts on TV while the poor Ghanaian suffer the consequence of corruption perpetrated by his corrupt appointees. The vulnerable fishermen are victims now, who is next?? A petition has been presented to the CID by a group called “Fisheries Alliance” to investigate this grand scandal. I pity this group, though I wish them well. This is a CID who has an albatross around her neck concerning her appointment. She is a beneficiary of a corrupt system, how can the corrupt fight corruption?

Where is the investigation report which the Ghana Police Service initiated against this same CID boss when she was found culpable in the Aplus’s 20,000 dollar allegation against the two presidential stuffers? This was a clear case of a police officer engaging in a cover up syndicate for two key public officers. We were told investigation had started, and few days afterwards she was mysteriously promoted to take over the position of her former boss in a circumstance Kwaku Baako described as “untidy”. Doesn’t this untidy situation and several others in this less than a year old government set out enough precedence for predictability in the consequence of our application of laws against corrupt officials in this government?

Why is the media not making the noise they made just few years back?? Where are the “Nyansafo)))” who were so loud?? Where is OccupyGhana?? Apart from His Excellency President Nana Akufo Addo, which other president in the history of Ghana has ever appointed his own daughter or son to work in his government? How many libraries are built with the ghc200m Ghana@60 budget? Where is that money?? I welcome the OSP! He will get real busy in a jiffy!!