Prince Akyereko Writes: Dealing With Corruption In A New Way

Since I had my first vote in Ghana and started developing love for politics. I have followed each administration that has come to power in Ghana. One thing is clear, each administration has been accused of corruption either by the citizens or political opponents.

So many appointees have either abused their office or engaged in broad day stealing of our resources which mostly come to us with the help of foreign donors. Some of these people have been prosecuted successfully and currently serving their jail term or completed jail their terms.

Some died just after their jail term ended. Yet, there seems to be no lessons learnt and people continue to engage the same activity that has sent others to prison or their early grave. Recently, the Presidency has to fire the CEO of National Youth Authority and his two deputies for the same offence.

In view of the rising perception of corruption in our communities, homes, government offices and others being caught in the act every day. We need a new way to deal with this situation in addition to prosecution.

First, we must as a matter of agency develop anti corruption lessons/courses and deploy into every organization whether private or government every three months. These lessons must be compulsory to every one working in the country from the police to the Presidency.

Studying these anti corruption lessons and passing them must be a criteria to determine promotions and bonuses if there are any. The anti corruption lessons must tell the impact of corruption in our communities and show why corruption is slowing our development. It must also define what is a corruption and a gift intending to corrupt people. It must also show how to avoid corruption. We must also show our poor communities in these lessons and how bad it is to steal from your government.

Additionally, we must start employing analysts who will analyse all corrupt processes or loopholes in our public organizations that allow people to be corrupted from end to end. We must identify all corrupt process and close them through the law or using process improvement to either digitize or iron out a better way to do the same activity that closes the loophole and the corrupt process.

These together with prosecution may go a long way to reduce this cancer from our society and government institutions. We must evolve as a nation on this issue and show the seriousness to end corruption from our country and our communities in order to give hope back to the hopeless.



By Prince Akyereko
Akyereko is a Senior Business Systems Analyst with TD Bank Group and based in Canada.