I was gifted goats, turkey to be corrupt – Awuni

Andrew Awuni, a former spokesperson of President John Kufuor, has cautioned politicians against corruption, insisting no gift should influence a politician’s decisions while in office.

According to him, the discussion on corruption should not be limited to politicians alone, but the entire society as some civil servants are more corrupt than the politicians.

Speaking on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Monday, 28 August 2017, he said while in public office, he received a lot of gifts but that did not coerce him to be corrupt.

He explained that some individuals try to be good to public officials by offering gifts whereas other have ulterior motives, but under no circumstance should a public official take gifts to favour the people who offer the gifts.

“I was a politician… Everyday people brought eggs to my house and sometimes I didn’t even know which people were dropping those eggs, but I wasn’t in a position to give anybody a contract. People were bringing fowls, they were bringing goats, and they were bringing turkeys. I wasn’t in a position to give them anything and I don’t think I did anything for them. Some people just want to associate,” he explained in to the host, Moro Awudu.

He continued: “I was in office for eight years and there was nowhere I went without returning with a smock. I didn’t even have a place to put smocks. It’s a position of blessing; you don’t need to steal to live well or to have chicken on your table as a politician. You don’t have to steal, you don’t have to go and collect a bribe.”

He recounted how he arranged for “people to go and meet President Kufuor and nobody on the surface of this earth can ever say that I took a payment or cedi or dollar from that person before I carried him to President Kufuor. It does not even occur to me… And yet, somebody is sitting behind and assumes that to be able to see President Kufuor, you must give people some money. That maybe totally false, but they throw these things out there to taint the politician and yet behind them in the classrooms, behind them at ECG… This morning, I was listening to some stories at the Lands Commission and somebody jokingly said that anybody at the Lands Commission who goes to heaven, it will be an accident because of the kinds of things that happen there”.

He added: “So let’s bring it (the discussion on corruption) down to the ordinary Ghanaian and begin to work our way up and begin to educate everybody and begin to find out how we can deal with it. But as soon as you limit it to the office holders, you make them defensive, and they are those who are supposed to lead the crusade… We need to spread the net. We need to look at everybody from the hospitals to the schools, ports and even our borders.”