I didn’t expect Amidu to stay in office for even a year - Azeem

Former Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Vitus Azeem has said he didn’t expect the Special Prosecutor to stay up to one year.

He said a lot of things did not seem right at the time of his appointment including the government’s inability to resource his office.

The Special Prosecutor in a statement yesterday shocked Ghanaians when he said he had resigned following what he considered interference in his work as an independent special prosecutor.

Speaking on the 3FM Sunrise Morning Show with Alfred Ocansey, Mr. Azeem said “I said it in 2018 I didn’t expect Martin Amidu to stay up to one year because as an anti-corruption person, you are only suspicious about political action. The office of Special Prosecutor was created to fulfill a campaign promise. We welcomed it because we thought it was going to help in the fight against corruption and so we appointed somebody there as an anti-corruption crusader. I suspected that he was not going to stay for long. He has even tried by staying there up to this time."

According to him, the man stayed long enough to agree that he was not succeeding and not getting the necessary support.

He said on the other hand the appointing authority and for that matter, the government and the state agencies did not give him the necessary support.

“So as the bible says the spirit is willing but the body is week. The office was set up to fulfil a campaign promise and that it did not have the necessary political will to make it succeed,” he said.

In the view of Mr. Azeem, the Special Prosecutor confidence in the system.

“Now that he has come out whatever the government was thinking he has preempted it.

“His resignation means we are going down the wrong lane. Forget about partisan interest. it has reached a stage where we cannot rely on the independent institutions apart from CHRAJ,” he concluded.

He, however, said the Office of Special Prosecutor should not be scrapped.