Auditor-General was hounded out of office under the guise of a leave – Mahama

Former president, John Dramani Mahama has opined that the Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelovo was hounded out of office under the guise of a leave directive by President Akufo-Addo.

According to him, Ghana’s constitution does not grant the president the power to ask the Auditor General to proceed on leave.

Speaking on Accra-based ClassFM on Monday, September 14, monitored by GhanaWeb, the former president said, “Well, the quote used is that: “When you fight corruption, corruption will fight you back’. And I think that that is the clear case of Domelovo. He’s a person with integrity and he’s quite a strong person when it comes to unearthing malfeasance and for the period that he’s served as Auditor-General.

“I think that he’s earned a lot of plaudits for the work he has done; he’s been very fearless in terms of his fight against corruption and when corruption fights back, that’s what happens.”

Mr. Mahama added, “I think the action by the president is wrong. He tries to base it on the precedence of former President Mills but the point is, if something is wrong, you cannot use it as the basis of precedence and do the wrong thing.”

“So, the Auditor-General’s office is defined in the Constitution and the Constitution tries to give the Auditor-General autonomy in terms of his work; like EOCO, like CHRAJ, like the Chief Justice, the Electoral Commission Chair, those constitutional bodies and, so, it’s not in the power of the President to ask the Auditor-General to go on leave,” the former president said.

He stated that “If you do that, the precedence it set tries to indicate that the President also has the power to ask the Electoral Commission Chair to take their accumulated leave or to ask the Chief Justice to take their accumulated leave, and, so, I think that he was hounded out of office.”

Former President John Dramani Mahama in December 2016 appointed Daniel Yao Domelovo to serve as Auditor-General with effect from December 23, 2016.

After unearthing some corruption-related cases and presenting reports to Parliament, the Auditor General was suddenly asked to take a 167-day accumulated annual leave in July this year by the office of the President.

Mr. Domelevo on his part said he was instructed to take his annual leave because his work was embarrassing the government.

In a letter to the Secretary to the president, Nana Asante Bediatuo, Mr. Domelovo said the decision to instruct him to go on leave was not taken in good faith.