Citizens must speak boldly against corruption – NCCE boss
The Executive Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Josephine Nkrumah says the fight against corruption in Ghana will not end anytime soon if citizens do not speak up publicly against it.
She said corruption in Ghana permeates almost every aspect of the Ghanaian society and it will only take bold citizens to fight it.
Speaking at the second edition of the Ghana Action Series, under the theme, “Responsible Citizenship and Accountable Leadership,” Josephine Nkrumah, said failing to speak up against corruption allows the practice that robs the country of its scarce resources.
“Corruption benefits only the individual taking it and adds up to robbing Ghana of about GH¢ 3 billion annually. Money that can wean us off donor dependency; the dream and essence of our Ghana beyond aid. When we as citizen leaders fail to speak against the conduct of the policeman and the trotro driver, we have condoned corruption,” she said.
“If we as citizens lead by condemning or reporting any act of corruption, it emboldens a new anti-corruption movement, but sadly, we have collectively failed to minimize corruption. Corruption, as we know, festers poverty, it breaks down social justice and cripples the essence of democratic governance,” she noted.
She added that Ghana faces a bleak future as far as corruption is concerned if conscious efforts are not made to instill into the youth values that abhor corruption.
Cataloging some violent and disruptive actions across all sectors of the society, Josephine Nkrumah said the system at the moment is designed to fail the youth, a situation she said must be adequately checked.
Ghana drops on corruption perception index
Ghana dropped 11 places from the 2016 ranking to place 81 out of 180 countries in the 2017 Corruption Perception index.
The Index put together by Transparency International ranks countries annually by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.
Ghana’s mark out of a total of 100 was 40, down from 43, which the country attained in the last index.
Executive Director of the local chapter of Transparency International, Ghana Integrity Initiative, Linda Ofori Kwafo told Citi News the country performed poorly.
“We have the CPI for 2017 and Ghana performed not too good. Ghana actually dropped so far as our score is concerned. The most important thing on the CPI is the score, and so on the scale of 0 to 100, Ghana scored 40 out of 100 points.”
source: citinewsroom