The Coalition for Democratic Accountability and Inclusive Governance, also known as Citizens’ Coalition, has asked the government to render comprehensive accountability to the citizenry for state funds, interventions and offices.
It said corruption in the public sector remained an existential threat to democracy which had eaten dangerously into party politics, public procurement and threatened to overwhelm the country.
“Despite the government’s interventions like the Office of the Special Prosecutor the provision of resources to some anti-corruption agencies and the passage of the Right to Information law had not made progress in the fight against public corruption,” the Coalition lamented.
Nana Asantewaa Afadzinu, the Executive Director of West Africa Civil Society Institute, and member of the coalition, who made the call at the launch of the coalition in Accra, echoed the call on the Auditor General to exercise his powers under the 1992 Constitution to issue surcharges and disallowances against persons cited for various financial irregularities in the 2019 and 2020 Auditor General’s Reports.
She recounted that in 2018, Daniel Domelovo, then Auditor General, recovered more than GH¢66 million back to government coffers through surcharges and expressed the Coalition’s worry over recent publications of the media in May and June 2022, which showed wanton disregard of already weak asset and liability declarations.
Nana Afadzinu revealed that according to information from the Auditor General published by the media, about 10,000 public office holders had declared their assets and liabilities but demanded the Auditor General directed all defaulting public officers to comply with the constitutional requirement immediately.
She urged the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice to take appropriate action against defaulting public officials which included initiating legal action against defaulters to enforce compliance or in lieu of compliance, have the courts impose sanctions on them, pursuant to its mandate under the Constitution and the Commission’s ACT.
“It is our firm expectation that by the end of August 2022, all defaulting public officers would have fully complied with the asset and liabilities declaration regime,” Nana Afadzinu noted.