Accra: Ghana has made progress in the fight against corruption under the administration of President John Dramani Mahama, but significant gaps remain and much more must be done to turn political commitments into tangible results, the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) and other stakeholders revealed.
According to Ghana Web, the assessment was made at a National Anti-Corruption Dialogue organised by the GACC to review the Mahama administration's anti-corruption agenda since it assumed office in January 2025. The forum, held under the theme 'Reviewing the Mahama Administration Anti-Corruption Agenda,' brought together anti-corruption practitioners, civil society organisations, journalists, and other stakeholders to assess the government's performance and identify reforms needed to strengthen Ghana's anti-corruption architecture.
The dialogue commended several measures undertaken by the government, including the Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) initiative, the termination of some controversial contracts, and the decision to transfer at least 80 percent of the District Assemblies Common Fund directly to metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies. However, they stressed that such measures must translate into results that ordinary Ghanaians can see and measure. Citizens, they said, must see investigations leading to completed cases, public assets recovered, and individuals found culpable facing clear and appropriate consequences.
The Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, said his experience at the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) had exposed serious weaknesses in Ghana's anti-corruption architecture that required urgent attention. Although the government had demonstrated political commitment to the fight against corruption, he said institutional and financial constraints continued to undermine the effectiveness of anti-corruption agencies.
Agyebeng called for the OSP to be entrenched in the 1992 Constitution and granted stronger institutional independence. He argued that without constitutional protection, the OSP could remain vulnerable to political and administrative pressures that could affect its ability to investigate and prosecute corruption cases. He also called for financial independence for anti-corruption institutions, arguing that agencies expected to investigate powerful individuals and complex corruption cases could not be effective if they remained heavily dependent on government budgetary allocations.
The Special Prosecutor further advocated non-conviction-based asset recovery, arguing that requiring the state to secure a criminal conviction before pursuing suspicious assets could weaken the fight against corruption. He said the law should empower the state, subject to due process and judicial oversight, to pursue assets where there was a significant disparity between an individual's known lawful income and accumulated wealth.
Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni used the forum to assess President Mahama's performance against the anti-corruption promises contained in the NDC's 2024 manifesto. He expressed concern about the discontinuation of some cases involving members or affiliates of the governing party, citing the Saglemi housing project and COCOBOD fertiliser scandal. Awuni warned that discontinuing cases involving political allies could establish a dangerous cycle in which successive governments protect their own while pursuing political opponents.
He described the situation as a 'very terrible precedent' and questioned whether politically controlled institutions could independently fight corruption. Awuni rejected the perception that civil society organisations were merely 'noise-makers,' citing their interventions that had produced concrete results, such as the controversial Agyapa minerals deal.
The dialogue called for greater scrutiny of sole-sourced public contracts, with participants expressing concern over reports that about 81 Big Push contracts valued at approximately GHS74 billion had not gone through competitive tendering. They maintained that competitive procurement should remain the norm and that sole sourcing must be properly justified and subjected to effective oversight. Participants also identified weak enforcement as a major challenge, arguing that Ghana does not necessarily lack anti-corruption laws but struggles to consistently enforce existing legislation.