Don’t bow to Attorney General’s intimidation over coronavirus report – Vitus Azeem to A-G

Anti-graft campaigner, Vitus Azeem has advised the Auditor-General not to bow to intimidation from the Attorney General over the release of the audit report on COVID-19 expenditures.

This comes on the back of the Attorney General accusing the Auditor-General of breaching the constitution by releasing the audit reports into the public domain.

The Attorney General, Godfred Dame in a letter to the Auditor-General, Johnson Akuamoah-Asiedu quoting Article 187(5) indicated that the report should have been released to parliament before getting to the public.

Mr. Dame added that Article 187(6) of the constitution also stated that Parliament should debate on the report and where necessary set a committee to deal with any matters arising from it.

Commenting on the matter on Morning Starr with Francis Abban Thursday, Mr. Azem stated that the Attorney General has no bases to fault the Auditor General over the release of the report.

“This is not the first time the Auditor General Report has been made public before it was discussed by Parliament. So I don’t know why all of a sudden the Attorney General is concerned about this particular one. Is it because of the embarrassing revelation that it has made?"

“Has Parliament complained and shouldn’t it be left with the Speaker to call the Auditor General to order if he is doing the wrong thing? So why is the Attorney General not complaining to the Speaker rather than writing directly to the Auditor General? When the Auditor General works nobody has the right to do anything to the work,” Mr. Azeem stated.

He continued: “The Attorney General cannot give a directive to the Auditor General if he has a concern he should write to the Speaker of Parliament and not directly to the Auditor General. Maybe that’s the aim but I don’t think the Auditor General should bow to that intimidation.”