Not all public officers are corrupt—Afriyie Ankrah

Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, a former Minister of Youth and Sports, has called on Ghanaians to desist from tagging all public office holders and politicians as corrupt.

“Inasmuch as it is important to name, shame and punish public office holders who engage in corrupt activities, it is a very bad precedent to categorise and generalise every politician as corrupt,” he said.

In a statement signed by Mr. Ankrah and made available to the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, he said the fight against corruption now demanded that anti-corruption campaigners focused much more on the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan.

He said the fight against corruption would almost be ineffective without a broad societal awareness to its dangers, costs and ramifications, as well as the unbridled commitment of every person to combat it.

He called for the proper functioning of institutions that investigate and prosecute corrupt practices to serve as a complement to education and prevention.

Mr. Ankrah said it was regrettable that even in the face of great efforts by President John Dramani Mahama and his government to drastically deal with corruption across board, a lot of disparaging comments had been made without any acknowledgement of the efforts by the President and government to stamp out corruption.

“The President has made great efforts to sanitise the system with a lot of political will, yet his hard work has been made to seem like a drop in the ocean by the very organs of our society that are interested in fighting corruption such as civil societies,” he said.

He wondered why civil society would never recognise and applaud government officials who took a stand in defense of the public purse.

He, therefore, commended government for its anti-corruption stance which has helped to retrieve millions of Cedis which otherwise would have been lost to the state.

Mr. Ankrah also cited the lack of transparency in assets declaration as a major problem in stemming corruption.

He said many government officials were apprehensive about declaring their legitimate assets and private businesses for fear of being targeted and destroyed when they lose political power.