Minority Leader: Prez Mahama's Admin Responsible For Ghana's Current Corruption Position

The Minority leader in parliament, and also the President of the Africa Parliamentarians’ Network Against Corruption (APNAC), Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu says he blames the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government and for that matter President John Mahama for leading the country to her position as the 2nd most corrupt country in Africa after South Africa.

Speaking on NEAT FM's ‘Ghana Montie programme with Kwasi Aboagye as host, he complained bitterly about the usage of sole sourcing, which is the number one source of corruption as far as this government is concerned.

According to him that is where most of the corrupt practices emanate from and that is why President Kufour ensured that the Public Procurement Act, 2003 was passed into law to establish the Public Procurement Board; make administrative and institutional arrangements for procurement; stipulate tendering procedures and provide for purposes connected with these, to cut off those bad practices, but the NDC government have held on to sole sourcing as a means of procuring things which is not serving the country any good.

“..The rate at which schools were being built in Kufuor’s era has gone up about five times in Mahama's administration (through sole-sourcing) even though the cedi /dollar rate has not shot up to that extent. This is bad and brings us to the corruption we are talking about. Roads construction is also suffering from the same corruption,” Hon. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu cried.

"... the most disturbing aspect of it is that during President Kufour's regime, between 2005 and 2008, he used $1.2 billion to construct four thousand four hundred and forty (4,440km) kilometers of roads, whiles between 2009 to 2014 in Mahama's regime, $1.9 biliion have been used to build only seven hundred and forty (740km) kilometers of roads…that is the corruption am talking about," he added.

“Things that are going on in this country are not fair.”

Ghana’s fight against corruption has been dealt another setback after the country was ranked as the second most corrupt African nation behind South Africa.

The corruption perception index by the Transparency International stated about 71 percent of people living in Ghana say corruption has increased over the last twelve months.

Ghana is closely followed by oil rich Nigeria making up the top three worst performing nations in the corruption index.