The Former Minister of Communication Dr. Edward Omane Boamah has said that former President John Mahama’s performance in the fight against corruption in the country was much better than President Akufo-Addo’s current efforts.
Referring to the most recent report on the global Corruption Perception Index (CPI), he indicated that the Akufo-Addo government has performed poorly in addressing corruption when compared to the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) anti-graft fight in four years under Mahama,
Ghana ranked 80 out of 180 countries on the 2019 global Corruption Perception Index, according to Transparency International (TI).
According to the report, Ghana scored 41 out of a possible clean score of 100 – the same score as the previous year, 2018.
Dr. Omane Boamah, speaking on Citi TV‘s The Point of View on Monday stated that the current government had failed to fulfil its promise of ending corruption during its tenure in office.
“They [the NPP] also said they were going to eliminate corruption. The most credible institution, which is globally accepted is Transparency International. The worst performance of President Mahama administration on the CP index is better than the best performance of Akufo-Addo. So when you talk about the elimination of corruption, especially in the procurement of goods and services etc, that one too they’ve not been able to achieve that,” he noted.
The CPI report
In 2015, Ghana scored 47 and in 2016, came down to 43. In 2017, it recorded the worst performance with an average score of 40 out of 100 and rose marginally to 41 in 2018 and maintained that figure in 2019.
To ensure Ghana improves on its performance, Government was advised to enforce sanctions against vote-buying, abuse of incumbency and threats to voters to ensure this year’s [2020] election is held in a free and fair environment.
The report also asked the Electoral Commission to also enforce sections 13 and 14 of the Political Parties Act, 2000 (Act 574) which deals with declaration of assets and expenditure by political parties
Anti-corruption efforts yielding results
Meanwhile, the government says its fight against corruption cannot be described as “totally lost” as recent corruption reports show improved scores.
The Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the government is committed to follow through with the anti-corruption fight and do more.
He noted that although there’s more to be done in the fight against corruption, he said data shows that the government’s efforts so far are yielding significant results.
