Politicians not as corrupt as civil servants – Tony Aidoo

Civil servants in Ghana are more corrupt than politicians who are frequently accused of the canker, Dr Tony Aidoo has claimed. He argued that civil servants, especially those working at the various ministries, departments and agencies, are at the forefront of corruption in the country.

“Honestly, civil servants are more corrupt than the politician, oh yes!” he said in an interview with Winston Amoah, host of 3FM’s morning show, Sunrise.

He observed that corruption, which has been one of the biggest challenges to Ghana’s development, “is in the gene of the Ghanaian.

It’s ingrained!” Dr. Aidoo said though fingers are always pointed at politicians as being corrupt, he believes they are not as corrupt as the country’s civil servants.

“First of all they [civil servants] are the ones who come in contact with the client. If you take the ministry, the chief director or accountant, auditor, [they] are the ones who deal directly with the client. If there is the need for a stone to be put on the paper it is not the politician who asks for that stone, the public servant,” he contended.

The former Ghana’s ambassador to the Netherlands further premised his claim on the numerous Auditor General’s financial reports on MMDAs, which has for years exposed massive misappropriation of public funds in state institutions in the country.

He said civil servants are mostly the ones who are mired in those corrupt deals per the reports of the Auditor General.

“Those auditor reports that appears before the parliamentary committee constantly show the people who actually misuse funds, divert funds and so on and so forth.

They’re all public servants. Dr. Aidoo has meanwhile underscored the need for the government to pluck the loopholes to make it difficult for people to engage in the canker so Ghanaians benefit from the resources that would have otherwise gone into private pockets.

“You have to siphon it out [through] proper monitoring so that the loopholes are blocked, that the advantages that the person gets are no more,” he advised.