<<Print>>

President John Mahama’s advisor on Governance and Corruption says the Ghanaian leader does not seek praise from anyone for waging a crusade against corruption in the country.

Daniel Batidam says the continuous lamentation of President Mahama about how corruption is bleeding the nation and its economy is evidence that he does not expect to be praised for fighting the canker.

The former head of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) – the local chapter of Transparency International disclosed this in an interview with Joy News’ Manasseh Azure Awuni.

President Mahama was recently invited to an anti-corruption summit organized by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron in London. He was one of a number of Heads of State from Africa invited to the global summit.

However, many Ghanaians have questioned the commitment of the President to root out corruption in his government.

Even though Mr. Mahama said in an interview with the BBC that he has not taken a bribe before, many people are pointing to some key members of his
government.

A probe into operations of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency (GYEEDA) in 2013 led to revelations that about 429 million cedis had been paid to some sixteen service providers for services they had not delivered.

Later, the government said it had retrieved 14.5 million cedis as part of the “Illegal money paid to contractors of GYEEDA.

The government has also been hit by what is termed in Ghana as the “Smarttys bus branding scandal.” A revelation that the rebranding of 116 Metro Mass buses cost the country 3.6 million cedis caused public outrage, compelling the government to retrieve 1.5 million cedis from the wholly Ghanaian company which executed the contract, Smarttys Management, and productions. The contracted was found by the government itself to have been
bloated.

Pointing to tardy efforts in retrieving money lost to the country through dubious deals, some Ghanaians believe President Mahama and his government have not done enough.

The President’s Advisor on corruption shares the concerns of Ghanaians.

Mr Batidam said, “In 2014 a year after I said heads must roll, I sat in the studios of Joy FM and was asked whether I thought what had been retrieved for GYEEDA in relation to what had been lost was enough and I said it was not enough and more needed to be done.”

“Ghana has had a checkered history of continuously confronting the issue of corruption and this is also evidence of the kind of result that we have from our surveys that Ghana has participated in notably the Corruption Perception Index between 2009 and now. We have moved from 39 to 48 that is 9 points [on the CPI],” he said.

“So even though we agree like many other countries that corruption is a problem, we are working at it and I think we are making more progress,” he noted.