The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) has launched an anti-corruption training manual for faith-based organisations (FBOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) to support them in the fight against corruption in Ghana.zz
The development of the manual formed part of the GII’s inter-faith anti-corruption project dubbed:
‘Speak up, resist and report corruption’.
The project is aimed at sharing knowledge and building the capacity of FBOs and CSOs to report and address corruption, as required under the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP 2015-2024).
Some of the topics in the manual are the Legal Framework of Anti-corruption, Anti-corruption Strategies and Reporting Corruption.
The GII is being supported by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).
Choice of FBOs
At the launch of the manual in Accra yesterday, the Executive Director of the GII, Mrs Linda Ofori-Kwafo, said FBOs were chosen as a medium to fight
corruption because of the instrumental role they played in shaping the values and integrity of society. “We are trying to bring anti-corruption training to many people in the country.
We realise that Ghanaians in general are very religious in nature.
We know that religious leaders are influential in society and that is why we have developed a training manual to train them, so that they use the manual in their churches and mosques to reach out to many people.
“I have no doubt that the manual will assist in raising awareness of corruption among FBOs, CSOs and the media and also enhance their capacity to report and address the canker of corruption,” she added.
Social canker
The Spokesperson for the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu, who is a member of the steering committee that drafted the manual, described corruption as a “societal ill” which needed to be uprooted from society.
“Corruption is a moral failure, a dead human conscience which undermines our honesty and sincerity as religious people. We have a weak spirit in fighting corruption.
We are a secular country but deep in the sense of God. We begin our National Anthem with God, we end our National Pledge with ‘So help me God’, we swear people into office with the Bible and the Quran, we place God at the centre of our national affairs, but the contradiction is that we have thrown the values that come with God away,” he said.
Sheikh Shaibu called on all religious leaders to use the manual as part of a tool to fight corruption.
“We must all, in the spirit that we uphold our God and the ethics that go with the spirit of God, uphold this manual and purge our moral space of this contaminant called corruption,” he added.
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