The issues of corruption and financial impropriety have become a byword in the country. Such issues have taken media space and not a day passes without examples and consequently discussions on how our nation has suffered from such improprieties.
Yet, to date, there has been no single successful prosecution of those former public officials and individuals who have been cited for their complexities in alleged embezzlement of state funds.
At best, we have become a nation of talkers, going around in a seeming circus with so much talk about corruption in high places, but without any action preferred against the perpetrators.
This seeming inaction and powerlessness exhibited by state agencies such as the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) have rather encouraged some state officials to bleed the nation’s kitty.
In fact, what Today finds most unacceptable is that even in the face of very incontrovertible evidence of syphoning of state funds by certain individuals, they are walking around free and are enjoying their ill-gotten wealth. What is preventing us from retrieving our monies and start freezing the assets they have procured through their underhand dealings?
The general inaction by prosecuting those who have misappropriated public funds in the past has fueled the brazen rape of state resources by some individuals charged with managing aspects of the nation’s purse. We cannot continue on that tangent when we need money to develop our country.
It is for this reason that Today wants to believe that the much talked about fight against corruption by the current government is not a mere rhetoric. We need to see some action.
And when we get around to taking action, we would like to plead with our financial courts to be seen to be working with stiffer punishment that would help deter people from using their offices to perpetrate corrupt practices to the detriment of our nation’s development.
Our judicial system could help us greatly if biting measures are instituted aimed specifically to make misappropriation of state funds unattractive so as to rid the country of institutionalised stealing.
We pray that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo keeps to his campaign promise of making corruption unattractive in his government which has permeated officialdom and the country’s body politic.
It also behooves all citizens who have the wellbeing of the state at heart, to report any cases of embezzlement to state institutions mandated to uproot white-collar crime, so that the courts can become fully operational.
We should not only be seen to be fighting corruption; we should actually take steps to weed out the canker by prosecuting those found guilty of making us all the poorer by their anti-social acts.
The time for ‘talk-talk’ must give way to real action that renders the stealing of state resources a risky enterprise.
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