Martin Amidu: Anti-corruption CSOs’ nomination onto OSP board mustn’t be rigged again

The public must be reminded that the three-year mandate of the Governing Board of the Office of the Special Prosecutor expired at midnight on 11″ July 2021 without word from the President or the Office to the public.

On Thursday, 12th July 2018 the Board of the Governing Board of the Office of the Special Prosecutor was sworn in by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, supposedly to make “the anti-corruption body now, fully ready to execute its mandate” (July 12, GNA).

At the swearing-in ceremony of the Board, the rhetorical President, Nana Akufo-Addo was reported by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) to have “said the composition of Board was to ensure the independence of the Office and added that, it was both crucial and mandatory for it to make the office self-standing and independent of the Executive.”

In practice, the President defended all members of his administration being investigated by the Special Prosecutor.

An appointee of the President to the Office was able to infiltrate into the Office, a colleague and friend she knew was a National Security Secretariat agent on a contract appointment. The operational number of the Toyota Land Cruiser and the military police bodyguard the contract appointee came along with and the partisan manner he conducted his work gave them away. His second one-year contract which I fought against expired in May 2021 and was renewed by his colleague friend despite the misgivings about this matter which I had indicated in writing before my resignation.

The President, in his usual intentional and deceptive political rhetoric “full of sound and fury signifying nothing”, is also reported by the same source to have “… told the Board that public expectations of it were high — the Ghanaian people were eager to see the Special Prosecutor’s Office fulfilled its statutory obligations.”

It was true that public expectations were high, but the President’s statement was merely intended to deceive the public that the pretentious President (who rode on the wings of anti-corruption fever of the people to come into power, with no real intention to fight corruption), was still with them in their anti-corruption vote at the 2016 elections.

At the time President Akufo Addo was making his highfalutin statements he knew that he had collaborated with his dual nationality citizen friends populating a particular Civil Society Organization to rig the nomination and electoral process for selecting the representative of the Anti-Corruption Civil Society Organizations.

The paradox is that the Anti-Corruption Civil Society Organizations knew this and had no courage to ensure that the sanctity of the nomination process of their representative was not raped. Their attempt to rent a press to speak for them did not work because of the hypocrisy involved and the unthinkability that members of Anti-Corruption Civil Society Organizations would be afraid to fight this form of corruption themselves.

Now that the three-year tenure of the Governing Board of the Office has expired, these facts need to be known so that patriotic Ghanaians will be alert and support the Anti-Corruption Civil Society Organizations to ensure that this time around their chosen representative is sworn-in by the President when the new Board comes to be inaugurated.

The Office of the Special Prosecutor needs to be operationalized and established as a specialized independent anti-corruption agency and not an adjunct of the Presidency as it has been for the past eight months. The Office will be of no use to the taxpayer if it is going to be another law enforcement and intelligence agency like the police service and other so-called “independent accountability agencies” who every reasonable and rational Ghanaian knows are tied to the apron strings of the rhetorical President Nana Akufo Addo and “The Family.”

Ghana does not need another law enforcement agency which behaves like the fowls’ court when cases affecting poor citizens, viewed as cockroaches, as distinct from “The Family”, are sent or referred to for investigation: cockroaches have no case in the court or forum of the fowls no matter how good their complaint.

That is the case in Ghana today. Let us, as patriotic citizens, put Ghana First!

The author, Martin A. B. K. Amidu, is a former Special Prosecutor and an anti-corruption campaigner.