Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng has launched a scathing critique of Ghana’s collective commitment to fighting corruption, asserting that the nation’s contradictory attitudes towards anti-corruption efforts are hindering progress.
Speaking at the Constitution Day Public Lecture under the theme “A Few Good Men: Suppressing and Repressing Corruption and State Capture in Aid of Development,” Agyebeng lamented the public’s ambivalence towards corruption enforcement.
“There have been attempts to discredit the principles of the office and its officers, unjustly attended by formidable resistance and push back. Often the attacks on the office and its principals are done by persons who are at the short end of investigation or prosecution, and the associates of such persons,” he stated.
Kissi Agyebeng highlighted the paradoxical nature of Ghana’s response to corruption, where the public protests both when the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) takes action and when it is perceived as inactive.
“The effect of the existential challenge confronting the OSP is that though the nation collectively acknowledges that we must fight corruption, yet there is also a section that the flagship agency designed, even if imperfectly, to fight corruption, is not needed and should be disbanded while others actively undermine it and its principal officers,” he noted.
The Special Prosecutor described this contradiction as a “curious cycle,” where the public’s conflicting demands hinder the OSP’s ability to effectively combat corruption.
“This has translated into a rather curious cycle; there is an outcry when the OSP acts and an outcry when it is seen as not acting. It is as if we do not know what we want. The situation in Ghana now appears to be like ‘we must fight corruption but we must not fight corruption, that is our state now,” Kissi Agyebeng added, emphasizing the need for clarity and consistency in Ghana’s anti-corruption efforts.
Kissi Agyebeng’s comments come against the backdrop of Ghana’s ongoing struggles with corruption, which have undermined the nation’s development and governance.
The OSP, established in 2017, by the former President Akufo-Addo led government has been at the forefront of efforts to combat corruption, but its work has been hindered by resistance and pushback from various quarters which he hasn’t been able to prosecute just one single case.
-BY Daniel Bampoe
