Presidential Advisor on Governance and Corruption, Daniel Batidam says the war being waged against corruption in Ghana requires more than chasing political opponents.
He said verifiable records show that the chasing of political opponents has been used in the country as a weapon to demand accountability.
Daniel Batidam explained that this practice of using political opponents as scapegoats in the fight against the canker over the years has not succeeded, and would not succeed now, because it cannot be the panacea to end corruption.
The anti-corruption crusader made the statement at a meeting with governance stakeholders in Takoradi, Western Region.
He said Ghana should be considering cogent methods in the fight against corruption rather than the visual cycle of applying archaic modus operandi of holding only past government officials accountable.
Instead of waiting for the tenure of office of public officeholders to end before they account, he suggested that stringent measures must be put in place while they are in office to check their activities, actions and decisions, including the causes of corruption.
In this case, he said the nation would be applying the preventable method of tackling corruption, which could be better than employing the negative attitude of waiting for the act to occur before the country begins fighting it.
Even with the right systems in place, he said, government would still require the commitment of all Ghanaians in order to effectively tackle the canker.
Western Regional Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo, on his part, catalogued the number of corruption cases that recently rocked the country, including an embezzlement of state funds by some district authorities in the region.
He said the issue of corruption ought to be tackled head-on by all, or else it would remain an illusion and continue to threaten development in the region.
Many development projects in the country have either been badly affected by the causes of corruption or could not be executed at all because of the effects of corruption, he added.
To this end, he appealed to public officeholders to consider the public interest, work in the interest of Ghana and avoid embezzlement and misapplication of state resources.
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