Private legal practitioner Ace Ankomah has opposed calls for the abolition of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), urging that the institution be given time to fully develop and operate.
His comments follow calls by the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, and some Members of Parliament for the OSP to be scrapped, with the Attorney-General’s Department instead empowered as the sole body responsible for investigating and prosecuting corruption-related offences.
Addressing Parliament on Wednesday, December 3, Mr Ayariga questioned the rationale behind what he described as the under-resourcing of the Attorney-General’s Department while allocating significant funding to the OSP, which he argued has failed to deliver expected results.
Speaking in an interview with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Monday, December 8, Mr Ankomah said the OSP is still evolving and should not be judged prematurely.
He explained that the nature of cases handled by the OSP—largely white-collar crimes—requires highly specialised investigative skills, which he said have historically been lacking within Ghana’s law enforcement and prosecutorial institutions, including the Attorney-General’s Department.
Mr Ankomah noted that the OSP only became fully operational in recent years after receiving the necessary funding and resources, cautioning against rushing to dismantle the institution.
He stressed that rather than abolishing the Office of the Special Prosecutor, efforts should be directed at strengthening its capacity to effectively tackle corruption.
“I don’t think it’s evolved yet. When we set up offices, we might expect them to grow and to evolve and even to make mistakes. We cannot expect a hundred percent, the eighty percent conviction rate. The lawyers know that the genre of crimes that the OSP is supposed to prosecute, often white collar crime, is one of the most sophisticated crimes.
He added, “So a certain level of skill is required to investigate white collar crime, which has somehow been missing from our body politic, has even been missing from our Attorney General’s Department.
“Look, how long did it take us to set up the OSP? It’s in recent years that he’s [Kissi Agyebeng] been given the money to set the office up. Before the office could crawl, we say kill the baby. Why are we in a hurry?”
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