Ghana Armed Forces Is Not Corrupt; TI Report Did Not Say So - Vitus Azeem

Executive Secretary of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Vitus Azeem has rubbished a report of Daily Guide newspaper which says Ghana Armed Forces is corrupt according to the survey of Transparency International.

Daily Guide’s Monday edition reported that; “Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption agency, has cited the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) as a corrupt institution in its latest report."

The report, dubbed, “Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index (GI)” which was launched in Accra yesterday, rated Ghana’s security sector ‘D’ for performance worse in the areas of finance, operations and procurement.

Ghana was in league with Kenya and South Africa but performed better than Nigeria, which scored ‘E’ (very high corruption risk).

The GI report tackled the overall transparency in the military of 47 African countries with emphasis on risk of defence corruption while considering the political, financial, personnel, procurement and operations risks as well.

But commenting on the publication of Daily Guide on the TI report, Vitus Azeem on Okay Fm’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show vehemently debunked the story saying; “it is not true; that is a complete lie because the report of Transparency International (TI) did not say Ghana Army is corrupt.”

Setting the record straight, Mr. Azeem rather stated from the report of TI that Ghana’s security sector faces corruption like many other Africa countries; however he also said Ghana was among the best in Africa that scored ‘D’ in the survey.

He added that even though the ‘D’ score is not the best, there was no other African country that scored between A and D and so the ‘D’ category Ghana found itself was the best for Africa.

“Ghana didn’t perform abysmally as reported by Daily Guide especially when you compare to other Africa countries. It was a survey that was conducted in a lot of countries including Africa to look at issues of transparency, oversight, procurement…these were used to compile the report and then the countries were now graded between A and F and Ghana was in D group,” he stated.

He stressed that Daily Guide’s report is a complete lie and should be disregarded; emphasizing that survey was looking at possible corruption risk in the defence sector for the military to go into commercial ventures.