Dr Nii Moi Thompson, the Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), has asserted that tackling corruption decisively will resolve more than 90 per cent of Ghana’s developmental challenges.
Speaking at the launch of the Ghana Statistical Service’s Governance Series Wave 1 Report in Accra, Dr Thompson described corruption as “the single largest threat to national development,” emphasizing its corrosive impact on public institutions and resource allocation.
Dr Thompson, who is also the Senior Advisor to the President on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), outlined a three-tiered “corruption pyramid,” starting with routine bribery at the base, which eroded public trust.
“When citizens must pay bribes for basic services, it poisons confidence in the very institutions meant to serve them,” he said.
At the middle tier, bureaucratic corruption, seen in procurement fraud, diverts critical resources.
“A school desk inflated from GH₵50 to GH₵100 due to graft means half as many desks for students. The same applies to hospital beds and roads,” he noted.
The most damaging, he argued, was political corruption at the apex, exemplified by opaque party financing and inflated contracts.
“Monetized politics forces winners to recoup campaign costs unethically, often at the public’s expense,” Dr. Thompson stated, citing past admissions by officials.
The report revealed that 70 per cent of Ghanaians felt excluded from decision-making, while 56 per cent reported contact with public officials in 2024—18.4 per cent admitted to bribery.
Dr Thompson urged deeper scrutiny of these findings, including whether “gift-giving” was conflated with bribery in the data.
He noted that inclusiveness alone was insufficient: “If citizens believe participation won’t yield responsiveness, indifference follows. We must address this disconnect.”
Dr Thompson challenged stakeholders to explore solutions, referencing anti-corruption models from China (strict penalties) to nations using institutional reforms.
“No country develops without slaying this monster. Ghana’s path must emerge from dialogues like today’s,” he said.
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