Earlier this week, I offered my opinion on the ongoing debate about the Office of Special Prosecutor (OSP) and whether it has the power to prosecute without express authorisation from the Attorney General (AG).
As the debate awaits settlement, two cases before the High Court have been adjourned, pending final determination.
Some social media comments have gone as far as to suggest that corruption is a normalised accepted practice in Ghana.
In the midweek piece, I challenged us to reflect on the OSP and the need for an independent institution with prosecutorial powers to fight corruption especially, because of the very limitations we have said the Attorney General faces.
In this piece, I am inviting us to reflect on what we Ghanaians have said about corruption as captured by the Afrobarometer survey and the implications for the fight against corruption.
The data is from the most recent iteration of the survey, Round 10, 2024.
Afrobarometer survey
The first observation is paying bribes for access to public services.
The survey asked how often citizens who have tried to access public services in three different areas – medical care, police assistance, and identity document- had to pay a bribe.
Across all three areas, 28 per cent of Ghanaians said they paid bribe at least once.
What is more worrying is the differences in the incidence of bribery for these services – medical care (19 per cent); identify document (40 per cent); and police assistance (52 per cent).
The second observation is the cleanliness of our institutions, and by that, I mean the percentage of citizens who answer the survey question “how many people are involved in corruption?” with the response “none.”
Across eight key institutional actors, no institution received a cleanliness score of more than 10 per cent.
In essence, what this means is that Ghanaians are saying across institutions, less than 10 per cent are not involved in corruption.
This is concerning.
The third observation looks at our perceived level of corruption in the country.
In the survey, as many as six out of 10 (63 per cent) described the level of corruption as having “increased a lot.”
The point to note about this number is that it takes us another decade back when in Round 6 (2014), the same number of Ghanaians perceived the level of corruption the same way.
Keep in mind that in Round 7 (2017) and Round 8 (2019), the number perceiving an increase level of corruption had declined significantly.
Fourth, and I repeat this observation from the midweek piece, is our evaluation of the fight against corruption.
Between Round 1 (1999) and Round 4 (2008) of the survey, no more than 22 per cent of Ghanaians rated how the government was handling the fight against corruption as “very well.”
By Round 10 (2024), only two per cent rated the fight as being handled “very well.”
The fifth observation: In the fight against corruption, citizens are encouraged to report any incidents they may observe.
The survey asked whether ordinary people could report corruption without fear or risk retaliation. In response, as many as seven out of ten Ghanaians (72 per cent) said reporting corruption comes with the risk of retaliation or other negative consequences.
So, what are Ghanaians saying in these five observations?
Here are the three salient summary points – a) there is institutional corruption, including paying to access basic public services; b) the fight against corruption is far from satisfactory; and c) citizens fear reporting corruption.
It matters
This matters because everything Ghanaians are expressing says the fight against corruption is far from over. It is an ongoing fight.
More importantly, the sentiments expressed tell me that Ghanaians, regardless of partisan sentiments especially, must be the ones providing the first line of defence for the country’s anti-corruption institutions.
I would like to believe that, for instance, paying bribes for accessing basic public services cannot be a practice citizens are happy about or willing to shoulder the burden in perpetuity.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor may not be the perfect institutional answer to the question of how best the fight against corruption can be waged.
However, in my view, it presents us with a strong anti-corruption tool, especially because of the independence it enjoys.
Whatever the fault, elimination is not the answer.
Even if the Supreme Court were to declare the Act establishing the office unconstitutional, Ghanaians must still fight for an independent anti-corruption office with prosecutorial authority.
I do not question the capacity of the Attorney General to prosecute corruption cases. I am yet to hear an assurance that the concerns we have always expressed about the limitation of independence it faces can be cured in the absence an OSP type of office.
The writer is the Project Director, Democracy Project.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh