Choose a president with moral ethics and credibility – Prof Adei

The former rector of Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), professor Stephen Adei has charged Ghanaian voters to reject presidential candidates with questionable characters as the country prepares for the December polls.

According to him a president without credibility is likely to be corrupt if elected into power.

Sharing some important traits from his new leadership book on identifying good leaders, the Ashesi University lecturer said “in choosing an individual for the presidency, we need to look at the character of the person, in terms of their ethics and their credibility. Because more often, this translates into how they perform; their likelihood to be corrupt and even their sexual morality eventually leads to the type of leadership we have”.

Prof Adei added that competence is not only in terms of professional, engineering or economics but the capacity of providing a national vision and ability to put together a competent cabinet and also mobilize people.

“The individual must have the ability to put the right people in charge of monetary and fiscal policies and be able to model and create the atmosphere for others to work effectively. A leader who rules based on partisan interest has missed it. Ghana is bigger than any political party, and if you want to exclude the Ghanaians who are not in your party, you will end up missing the target of leadership,” Prof Adei said.

Prof Adei lamented the current state of leadership the people are receiving from politicians after being voted into power.

“When leaders have their people at heart, their desire is not to enrich themselves, they think about the general welfare - provision of basic education and basic healthcare as well the day-to-day needs of the ordinary people without any party colours and discrimination,” he said.