The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has mounted a spirited defence of its fiscal and operational impact, revealing that its investigations and corruption-risk audits have saved Ghana more than twenty times the total amount of money ever released to the office since its inception in 2018.
In the newly released Half-Yearly Report for the second half of 2025 (July to December), Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng slammed a recent parliamentary attempt to abolish the office, describing the move as a diversionary tactic pushed by entrenched interests “justly threatened by accountability”.
The report offers a direct rebuttal to critics who have characterised the OSP as a “drain on national resources”.
According to the Special Prosecutor, despite the office still being in its formative stages and facing “immense budgetary challenges”, it has effectively paid for itself multiple times over.
The OSP’s data suggests that for every cedi invested in the office by the taxpayer, the state has avoided losing over 20 cedis through blocked fraudulent contracts, recovered assets, and the prevention of procurement breaches.
“It cannot be maintained by any form of argument that the Office has not performed as expected and that it is a drain on national resources,” Mr Agyebeng stated in the report. “The Office… had a stellar record and its ultra-high profile and ground-breaking corruption and corruption-related investigations… had saved the nation more than twenty-fold the total amount of money actually released to the Office,” he stated.
“Therefore, it cannot be maintained by any form of argument that the Office has not performed as expected and that it is a drain on national resources.”
The report details a period of “existential trial” during which a Private Member’s Bill was introduced in Parliament by Majority Leader Mahama Ayariga and Majority Chief Whip Rockson Nelson Dafeamekpor to repeal the OSP Act (Act 959). The bill sought to return prosecutorial power to the Attorney-General’s Office, citing “administrative inefficiencies”.
However, the bill was swiftly withdrawn following a high-profile intervention by President John Dramani Mahama, who has consistently described the calls for closure as premature.
President Mahama argued that the OSP remains the only agency with the independence required to prosecute members of the sitting government—a task for which a Cabinet-member Attorney-General is “not well-suited”.
As of January 2026, the OSP’s impact is evidenced by a heavy docket of high-stakes cases. Notable among these is the prosecution of former National Petroleum Authority (NPA) boss Mustapha Abdul-Hamid and others (CR/0603/2025), alongside ongoing investigations into the Airbus SE scandal, payroll fraud, which saved over GHS 34 million in 2024 alone, the Cecilia Dapaah case and the ongoing corruption-related case against former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta.
The Special Prosecutor emphasised that the OSP welcomes oversight, pointing to its attendance to parliamentary committees.
However, he warned that the 2026 fiscal year will see even more extreme resistance as the office expands its Lifestyle Audits and Unexplained Wealth Investigations.
“The Office does not avoid accountability. It welcomes scrutiny,” the statement concluded, while maintaining that current attempts to dismantle the office are “advanced without any reference to the actual performance” of the agency.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com