You cannot control the Auditor-General – Kwaku Azar to Audit Service Board

Renowned legal practitioner, Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare alias Kwaku Azar has condemned the interference of the Audit Service Board in the work of the Auditor General.

According to him, the Ghanaian Constitution creates a one-man Auditor General and a one-man Auditor General’s office in article 187 A, which makes it wrong for the Board to interfere in Mr Yaw Domelevo’s business.

“The board of the Audit Service cannot control the Auditor General because the Auditor General is independent of everyone including the board.

“The Constitution creates a one-man Auditor General and a one-man Auditor General’s office in article 187 A. The Audit Service Board is something different from Article 189.”

“The bigger problem is the Board Chairman of the Audit Service who is at the Auditor-General’s office micro-managing,” he told Samson Lardy Anyenini on JoyNews’ Newsfile programme, Saturday.

He also established that the Auditor-General is independent of all public institutions and answerable to the courts, Parliament and the public only and not the president.

“Auditor-General, unlike most people, is directly employed by the people of Ghana and accountable only to Parliament. It will make no constitutional and audit sense that the Presidency oversees the work of the Auditor-General”.

Professor Azar's comments come after Mr Domelevo, revealed in a video that locks to his office have been changed without his knowledge, barely a month into a directive by President Nana Akufo-Addo ordering him to proceed on his accumulated leave.

Before Mr Domelevo was forced by the Presidency to take his accumulated 167 days leave, he had been battling Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, and others for superintending over a $1 million payment to Kroll & Associates allegedly for no work done.