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By Pascal Kafu Abotsi
([email protected])
The incessant upsurge in reports of corruption which have entangled the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration has compelled the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Tema East, Daniel Nii Kwartei Titus-Glover, to regard the wealth-amassing venture of the ruling government as a profession.
Mr. Glover saw the relaxed leadership style of the President as the object that had permeated a favourable ambiance for the criminal act to thrive, which he said, they did with impunity and finesse because there was nothing wrong with that. “The situation has become worse because the NDC government sees nothing wrong with looting the state’s resources,” he said.
Speaking on Adom FM’s Morning Show -‘Dwaso Nsem’ yesterday, the controversial MP observed that: “Corruption is now a profession under Mahama,” adding that “even when resources are available to them, they are unable to manage it, but rather choose to loot the state. They actually do it with impunity and with a style.”
Information of several thousand ‘ghost names’ which had made inroads onto the payroll of the Controller and Accountant General Department (CAGD), formed the basis for the corruption tag he had placed on the ruling government.
He elucidated that Ghana wouldn’t have been saddled with developments if it was under the leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo, given the case that there were numerous resources and huge funds available to the present NDC administration.
Several attempts made by the current government to scrape ghost names from its pay roll have not been without its attendant problems. The NPP, in 2003, under ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor was able to reduce ghost names from government payroll from 15,800 to 3,800 with Osafo Mafo as the Finance Minister, political pundits argue that should have formed a fertile ground for the present government to succeed in that exercise.
As a measure to find some solution to the problem, the Controller and Accountant General’s Department in September 2014, suspended salaries of about 20,000 employees without bank accounts.
But Mr. Titus-Glover opined that those names were inserted by persons within the system, and that it was up to the government to ensure they were cleaned in order to stop the wastage of national resources which eventually sent us on our knees to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for bailout.
The Tema East legislator’s concern on corruption had been preceded by some bigwigs in the opposition party whose concrete description of the NDC government as incompetent, they concur had been saddled with corruption.
For example, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia, running mate of the Presidential Candidate of the NPP, in September 2015 lashed at the President Mahama and his NDC government for wasting the tax payer’s money. He said the seven-year tenure of the NDC had been marked by incompetence and corruption, resulting in the ‘wahala’ the people of Ghana were facing.
According to Dr. Bawumia, Ghana would have been ten times better off under an Akufo-Addo-led government, considering the numerous resources available to the Mahama administration, noting that they had all been mismanaged.
Dr. Bawumia made this observation when he addressed NPP activists at Nkawkaw in the Eastern Region as part of the “Rise and Build” tour led by the party’s flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo.
Apart from politicians who have observed that corruption hangs around the neck of the Mahama-led administration, Transparency International in December last year, rated Ghana as the second most corrupt country in Africa.
According to the latest ratings by the international body, the country was closely followed by Nigeria, with South Africa perceived as the most corrupt nation on the continent. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by the TI stated that about 71 per cent of people living in Ghana said corruption had increased over the last 12 months.
Mr. Glover is, therefore, incensed by the fact that government turns a blind eye to the very growing canker, particularly in the public sector, which continues to cast the image of the country internationally, in a bad light.
Convinced that the ruling government would be unable to purge itself of the corruption it has been saddled with, the lawmaker called on Ghanaians to vote out the ‘incompetent’ NDC government in the 2016 election to put the country on a sound footing, just as former President Kufour had done.
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