Martin Amidu 'likely' to resign – Bagbin

A National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer hopeful Alban Bagbin on Thursday said the special prosecutor is “likely to quit” due to lack of resources to effectively fight corruption.

Martin Amidu has over the months been lamenting over lack of cooperation on the part of government appointees in providing him with evidence to prosecute cases of corruption.

“The present situation where critical ministries and agencies have failed even with our limited constraints or refused to produce public records on demand to aid the office in critical investigations, offences running into millions of cedis, clearly demonstrates that there is divergence between the president’s vision and that of some of his appointees.

“You ask for information you can’t get it, you ask for docket, the docket cannot be produced. You ask a minister for a record, the record cannot be produced. How do you fight corruption when those appointed by the president who has a vision are not coordinating with the office of the special prosecutor to achieve his mandate? That is the challenge we have to face,” the anti-corruption crusader bemoaned at a National Audit Forum organised by the Ghana Audit Service in Accra last year.

Speaking on Morning Starr, Bagbin said state institutions tasked to fight corruption are weak because they have not been tooled to effectively fight the menace.

According to him, he foresees a situation where the special prosecutor could become frustrated and “he is likely to quit.”

“Amidu is a clean gentleman serving his nation,” the second deputy speaker of Parliament told host Francis Abban.

“He doesn’t have the tool to work with and the space. Knowing Martin, he is likely to quit because he would not be there to soil his reputation and he’s not looking for comfort at all,” the MP for Nadowli-Kaleo stressed.

Corruption fight horrible

Bagbin described the fight against corruption under the Akufo-Addo government as “horrible” because it is not backed by action.

He said: “Corruption fight is horrible. Usually words, words and words but no action. Because of partisanship people are defending their own. There are no strong state institutions to be able to hold the government to account and it’s very bad.

“If we want to fight corruption the first thing to do is to put systems in place to prevent it. It’s not about failure of prosecution, but we’ve not been able to empower them to investigate.

“We need to give them the instrument to throw light on the dark. The court is not looking for truth but evidence and it’s not easy in a situation like we have.”