The older the politician, the higher the likelihood of corruption - UG Lecturer

A senior political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr Kobby Mensah has expressed concern about the political opportunities given to persons in their old age at the expense of younger people.

Speaking in an interview on 3FM monitored by GhanaWeb, Dr Mensah drew a proportional relationship between the proliferation of corruption and the age of persons given opportunities in the country’s political system.

“When people are at the tail end of their ages of their life and certain ambitions have not been met, that is where we see our resources being dissipated because they feel like they don’t have enough time and so they want to rake in a lot more before they go.

"So the more older people we find in our political system the more corruption it is. I mean I can be blunt about it because that is the truth and when people haven’t achieved what they have set out to do, they get the opportunity at the top quartile of their ages and then they want to unleash all their ambitions at that top end,” he noted.

He stressed that young people on the other hand are inclined to be less corrupt as they tend to consider the length of their careers and are more sensitive about facing the consequences of corruption.

“But if you give a young person such opportunity, they know they have a lot of time and years ahead of them, they know that they can be summoned, they can be challenged by their own groups and older folks and they know that there can be consequences,” he stated.

The lecturer thus advocated for a more forthright discussion about the capabilities and abilities that young people posses and giving them opportunities in the country’s political space.

“Someone who is at the end quartile of their life what do they fear? They fear nothing. So I think that we have to open up the conversation, we have to open up our minds and our thinking about what these young people can do,” Dr Kobby Mensah noted.

There have been persistent concerns about the continuous stay in office by some public and political officials despite having gone past the official retirement age.

In March this year, a group of private citizens staged a protest around parliament demanding the removal of some two senior official at the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

According to the group, Director General of the GRA Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah and the revenue generation officer of GRA, Juliana Essiam have continued to remain in office despite attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60 and the exhausting their extended contracts.

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