PROFESSOR YAW SAFFU, head of the Governance Centre of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), has advised the Kufour administration against establishing an Office of Accountability in the Presidency, as it amounts to ‘a mere public relations unit and a complete waste of everybody’s time.’
Saffu, a Senior Fellow of the IEA said: ‘Recently there have been newspaper reports that, the government is proposing to establish an office of accountability and locate it in the President’s office. I have no better and fuller details on the proposed unit, but even without those details, I am prepared to predict that such an office will be a mere PR and a complete waste of everybody’s time; and the sad thing is it will not fight against grand corruption one iota’.
Surveying similar ill-advised efforts elsewhere, Saffu noted: ‘In Africa, I don’t know of one that succeeded; there was the case of Zambia, it didn’t succeed. If you look at Singapore there was success, but Singapore is a very different society from ours and Zambia’.
Professor Saffu, expressed his disdain for government-run Offices of Accountability in an interview after a public forum organised by the IEA on the theme, “Who Is For A Leadership Code With Teeth” in Accra.
He said, that the Ghanaian society was so different for such an office to work and that the lack of discipline would always leave offenders off the hook.
Professor Saffu advocated an independent Office of Accountability: ‘Such an office, should be independent as far as possible; and locating this in the Presidency would not guarantee it that kind of independence which is necessary for effective functioning.
Saffu said he was aware that any serious attempt to fight corruption in society involved more than the existence or the establishment of a leadership code that is enforced ruthlessly.
‘Prevention, investigation, and genuine support for the independent frontline bodies in the assault on corruption are all critical, but strict enforcement of a leadership code is the most direct and the most effective assault on high level corruption, for such enforcement to have any hope of being realised in Ghana. I suggest we need to have at least two reforms in place.
First, he stressed, we needed to have an independent public constitutional Office of Public Prosecutor, independent of the Office of the Attorney General and not under the control of any political office holder.
Secondly, Professor Saffu would want the Freedom of Information Act in place, adding that the 1992 constitution enjoins all citizens to enforce its provision and in the case of its unconstitutional overthrow, be prepared to defend it.
He said that though making the Public Prosecutor independent would require a constitutional amendment, and cannot be executed in a hurry, processes should be initiated now, as it would do the country a lot of good in the long run.
