SONA 2024: Akufo-Addo’s silence on corruption means he isn’t proud of his work – Wilson Jnr

The Chief Crusader for Think Tank Crusaders Against Corruption, Emmanuel Wilson Jnr., has said he believes President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is not proud of his own corruption fight after 7 years of being in government.

The anti-corruption campaigner, who was speaking on the Good Afternoon Ghana programme on Accra-based Metro TV, contended that he is convinced Akufo-Addo did not touch on corruption matters while delivering the State of the Nation Address in parliament because his fight against corruption has been unsuccessful.

President Akufo-Addo has come under a barrage of criticism from the Minority in Parliament and anti-corruption campaigners for not mentioning corruption-related issues during his address.

Wilson Jnr argued that taxpayers’ funds that have been pumped into the institutions responsible for fighting corruption, such as the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), the Office of the Special Prosecutor, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, and others, have been wasted over the years because Ghana has maintained its position on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for the last four years.

“Sad to say, for the past 4 years, we have run 43 consistently as far as the CPI is concerned,” he said.

Wilson Jnr who is also the host of the Politics and Beyond programme on TV XYZ, asserted that he expected to hear the president talk about the state of the Asset Declaration Act (Amended) and the Conduct of Public Officers Bill, which has been on his table for 2 years.

To him, President Akufo-Addo has failed in his fight against corruption, contrary to what he promised Ghanaians in 2016.

The anti-corruption crusader’s comments come a month after the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023 released by Transparency International (TI) scored Ghana zero for the fourth consecutive year in fighting corruption.

The report that was released on January 30, 2024, by the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) and the local chapter of Transparency International indicated that Ghana scored 43 out of 100 and ranked 70th out of 180 countries and territories included in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023.

The position of the country in 2023 marks the fourth consecutive year of stagnation in Ghana’s anti-corruption efforts, as indicated by the CPI.

Transparency International attributed Ghana’s stagnation to the deteriorating justice system, which it said was reducing the accountability of public officials and therefore allowing corruption to thrive.