The Efficacy Of Anti-Corruption Measures: What Is Missing And The Way Forward

My grandfather once told me the story of an old woman in Asadame, the village where he was born. The woman was 60 years old. She had vast lands and farms. She also had a large family of about 27 children and grandchildren, some of them highly educated with the others blessed with great talents that gave them the potential to turn her assets into wealth for a family legacy for generations yet unborn. The whole village, therefore, looked to the old woman’s family to lead the way in its efforts to get out of poverty.

However, my grandfather told me, the family carried an ancestral curse that made any family member go mad if they tried to exploit the family assets to increase their wealth. The old woman’s mother had shown her the remedy to the curse. The remedy was made up of some clear, concise dos and don’ts. The old woman had appointed three members, (oh but four members) of her family to enforce those dos and don’ts but neither they nor the other family members would obey. Therefore, though they had everything to make the family wealthy and lead the rest of the village out of poverty, they could not create real wealth out of their vast resources.

Mr. Chairman, much as this is not a real story, it represents Ghana’s case. The 60-year old woman is Ghana with a population of over 27 million, many of them well educated with others well talented in many fields. We are blessed with almost every natural resources God gave humankind – oil, gas, gold, diamond, bauxite, stones, salt, sea, navigable waters, fertile land, brainy people.

However, like the old woman’s family, Ghana suffers a curse, which is corruption. We have the remedy but as was the case with the old woman’s three (oh but four) appointees, the institutions we have set up to ensure the application of the remedy are themselves sometimes found wanting.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my contention that the fight against corruption in Ghana has not been efficacious not because of want of anti-corruption measures. My friends who are learned – lawyers I mean – make me understand that there are very many good anti-corruption laws and regulations on the books of the country. Tacitus, of the Annals of Imperial Rome says, “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” ―

The criminal code criminalizes corruption. It makes it a prosecutable offence to give or take a bribe. It also makes money laundering a criminal offence.

We have the Procurement Act and the Internal Audit Act. Additionally, the Public Service Act includes guidelines on conflict of interest; we even have the code of ethics for Ministers and Political Appointees. These are but just a few of the measures that are in place to fight corruption.

The nation does not appear to make good headway in fighting corruption because the link between the measures and implementation is weak if not missing due largely to human element, which has weakened enforcement.

I will, therefore, attempt to show what is missing and propose some way forward.

WHAT IS MISSING

Political leadership is missing

I quote the Professor Patrick L.O. Lumumba, the famous Kenyan Lawyer and Anti Corruption Campaigner “Corruption is something that we talk about. It is something that we complain about. It is something whose negative impact we recognize. It is something that even the corrupt acknowledge it’s a bad thing. But the irony and the tragedy at once is that those who engage in corruption love it. The tragedy at once is that those of us who do not engage in it directly accommodate it. Our levels of tolerance for corruption in Africa are amazing. Long time ago, a great Greek philosopher said that it is in the nature of man to hang the small thieves and to elect the great ones into public office. We do that in Uganda, we do that in Kenya, we do that in Tanzania, [and let me add we do that in Ghana] and we do that in Africa. And that is why Africa remains the poorest continent on earth”.

Regarding what is missing, first is a political leadership committed to fighting against corruption. Political leadership is very important in the war on corruption. If the political class abhors corruption and send clear signals that they will punish it, the citizens take a cue from it.

However, if they, by their actions and inactions, show that the way to get rich quick is corruption either, participating in it themselves or turning a blind eye to acts of corruption, the citizens follow suit. It appears to me that the political class have not acquitted themselves well in this regard and we the citizens also do not seem to want them to do so. Some even suggest that we expect them to be corrupt. They award contracts to cronies, inflate the cost and arrange kickbacks for themselves and their political parties. These are not secret to the citizens because the contractors who pay the kickbacks are among the citizens. Therefore, when the citizens see the same politician the next moment on political platforms shouting against corruption, they don’t take them seriously.

Normally when we talk about political leadership, people tend to focus on the president. I say no. I look at all the actors in the ruling class because they all play leadership roles in some respects as they act on behalf of the president. Therefore, even if the president is politically correct corruption-wise, his appointees and party operatives can let him down and send the wrong signal to the people– and we have seen this happen too often in our country. So when you consider the Executive you then have to stretch it from the Local Government officers all the way to the very top. We all have to demonstrate leadership with integrity and it has to permeate all we do.

Now to Parliament, another facet of political leadership. Parliament is clothed with enough powers to ensure that anti-corruption measures bite. However, the impression one gets from this highly respected body’s attitude to corruption is business as usual. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament holds sittings that are broadcast live on GTV at great cost to the taxpayer. Citizens watch honourable members of this respected committee put tough questions to people who appear before them as the committee seeks answers to various infractions of the financial regulations meant to protect the public purse as exposed by the mostly belated Auditor-General’s report. Sometimes members brilliantly expose clear cases of embezzlement which court their genuine displeasure, much to the pleasure of the viewing public, who leave their TV sets with the expectation that the PAC will pursue its righteous anger and push for such corrupt acts to be punished.

However, much to the disappointment of citizens, all those live sittings they watch end up as good TV shows with great conflict between protagonists and antagonists of corruption. No push afterwards by the PAC to get the 2 Generals; the Attorney-General and the Auditor-General to deal with those who circumvent financial regulations, but it is by this subtle way that people fleece the state of funds.

It took Occupy Ghana in June 2016 to go to the Supreme Court, seeking an order directing the Auditor-General to issue disallowances and surcharges to and in respect of all persons and entities found in relevant, successive reports to have engaged in misappropriation of state funds. It was in June this year that the Supreme Court ordered the Auditor General to, with immediate effect, begin surcharging persons found to have misappropriated monies belonging to the state.

Also there have been several allegations of corruption against parliamentarians and the perception out there in the public does not speak well of the Legislature. I am sure we remember the issues raised by Hon Bagbin, Prof Addai, Hon Martin Amidu and the recent one was the Minority claims during the vetting and the matters there after. There is the need to deal with these perception issues and regain the trust of the people.

The Judiciary were also exposed by Anas work and the perception was confirmed as reality and that, justice is still be sold to the highest bidders. There are some of the bad nuts within the entire justice delivery system, some court clerks and officers, lawyers, judges and even some prison officials were all found to be corrupt.

From the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan, the NACAP, We expect that the anti-corruption law enforcement agencies are crucial in the fight against corruption. They must continue to execute their mandates effectively and to improve upon coordination, information sharing and collaboration. They must also enhance their contribution in the fight against corruption within their own institutions as well as beyond them. As anti-corruption and law enforcement bodies, compliance with their statutory mandates and with the Codes of Conduct for Public Office Holders is among the most minimum expectations members of the public have of them. But is that what we see? We thought that with the single spine the police would stop the collection the red notes, but no some of them and especially on the traffic duty have rather moved on to the brown notes. You remember the challenge at the ports where we could not get the various agencies to agree on common inspections and narcotics come to the port and it slips through the hands of all of the state institutions at the Tema port.

Yes the Media is the fourth estate of the realm, they are the fourth members of the old lady’s family that were appointed, you remember in the story I told you at the beginning, and we have also not lived up the minimum expectations that the public have of us, of holding ourselves to account of the people to go on further to execute our constitution mandate of hold government (and leadership generally) to account of the people as stipulated in chapter 12 of the constitution.

Some of us have been accused of acting for and receiving soli, taking brown envelopes to throw stories. But I have to concede that some journalists and media people have done some good work. But there is a lot to be done to deal with the perception of corruption within the media. We need to hold ourselves to account and also ensure that we do not get in bed with politicians nor businesses. This anti-corruption fight will not succeed without the utmost support of the Media and civil society serving as watchdogs. The media plays an important role in investigating and reporting corruption and building support to combat it.

A free and independent media, we have but what has come of Right to Information Bill. It has obtained the notorious tag of the being the bill has spent the longest time at the Bill stage. I am not sure where it currently is. The current government gave its word of passing soon and should hold them to their word. For access to information, is extremely important in the fight against corruption. The media must be bold in publishing information about corrupt officials and corruption cases. The media must be prepared to “name and shame” without compromise. It is by exposing incidents of corruption that there will be an environment in which corruption is a high-risk and low-gain undertaking.

Moral leadership of the clergy is too weak

Though politicians have power to make things happen, they themselves are subject to a greater force that can transform their politics and make them abhorrent of corruption. This force is the moral force and those who can exert it are our religious leaders, the clergy. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the moral leadership of the clergy is too weak to help ensure the efficacy of the anti-corruption measures.

Most of the clergy, especially the single-owner-churches, see the church as a business and they run it as such. They position their churches to attract people who can make big donations and they don’t mind the sources of the money the laity donate. In fact, in some churches, to become an elder depends on your purse than your spiritual growth and moral uprightness. Thus, people use the gains from corruption to gain positions in the church and their pastors are fine with it. Some also use the positions in the church as a cover for their corrupt activities.

Most clergy preach only materialism to their members and their prophecies are always about people getting visa to travel abroad or an unexpected windfall to a desperate member of the church. They thus create a craving among the people for material things and deliberately neglect to preach against corruption in order not to attract the displeasure of corrupt people with big purse in their church. Preaching about salvation has been replace with instant wealth here on earth.

Do you see the huge opportunity the nation misses here? The clergy controls huge numbers and can help educate citizens on the anti-corruption measures to ensure that they work but no.

Our schools should also have provided us a forum to preach integrity but what do we see, parents have to pay bribes for the children to get admission into schools and the children also are aware of this. It results in corruption starting from the basic school, to the extent that at the JHS level the pupils are exposed to appo. We are sowing terrible seeds for the future.

We now have schools and even churches selling doctorates and we have supposed big men and women in society also abusing these doctorates. We the media also allow them to use these bought honorary doctorates as post norma instead of being pre norma.

What are we telling the kids? That you do not need to work for your academic qualifications you can just buy them? So we have the males buying with cash and female trading sexual favors for marks in exams. This has to stop, you can be the salt of the earth and it starts with you and l today.

Decent conditions of service for public servants

Mr/Madam Chair, one thing that is also missing in the bid to make anti-corruption measures efficacious is decent conditions of service for public servants. The truth is wages of public servants though have seen some improvement with the single spine there are still some areas where they are low and the general conditions of service leave much to be desired. For example, public servants have no housing scheme and yet many of them will retire to meagre pensions that can’t even hire rooms for themselves.

Thus, low future pension combined with the pressing need to put up a house to shelter their families in the face of rising cost of living make some of them resort to other means to supplement their incomes and corruption is invariably one of the means. They either engage in petty corruption themselves or turn a blind eye to corruption by others and take a reward for connivance.

Citizenry with an anti-corruption mentality

But even if we improve the conditions of service of public servants and the living standards of the citizenry in general, it will require an anti-corruption mentality among the populace to ensure the effectiveness of the anti-corruption measures. At the moment, that is also missing. Citizens encounter corruption all the time, whether it is a policeman taking a bribe by the roadside, nursing training college official demanding a bribe before admission or hospital officials taking money without a receipt. However, citizens refuse to confront the perpetrators. In fact, they agree to pay such bribes if they have to, so that they get the services they need. The country’s anti-corruption measures will not work if the citizens do not actively participate in enforcing them. We the citizens are too passive and actually acquiescent to corruption most times.

Development Partners & Foreign Investments

“The givers of most of the corruption in Africa are from outside Africa” – President Olusengu Obasanjo. But who is giving it and who is taking it. Are we not part takers in the corruption, be it that it is done with foreigners? Whose country is being destroyed. It is not an excuse, that the West who will normally point a figure at Africa as guilty as we the Africans.

Yes it is said that Tax avoidance by international corporations costs African governments far more money than the corruption of politicians and civil servants. And African states lose more money due to tax avoidance by international corporations than they receive as development aid.

George Turner is a writer and researcher with the Tax Justice Network, published for the TJN a paper that said inter alia that “a recent UN report sheds light on cases of cross-border corruption in Africa. In 99.5% the cases involved non-African firms. This means that African companies active in neighbouring countries are not the main culprits who pay bribes to “host” governments. Mostly multinational corporations do so. It is true, however, that the report only examined cross-border corruption, making no assertions concerning domestically paid bribes.

So we need to also monitor the effects of foreigners on corruption. But it starts from us

Technology that eliminate human-to-human dealings in transactions

Mr/Madam Chairperson, still we have not been able to deploy technology in a way that helps to eliminate human-to-human dealings in transactions. For as long as human beings come face to face to transact business, the temptation to collude for some corrupt act is high.

In all the points I have made it still has to be said that Leadership is Cause and everything else is effect. So we need all class of leaders to step up and be counted. It looks education and democracy that should have promoted integrity and honesty has rather done the opposite. That has to stop.

I agree with Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper Kwesi Pratt when speaking on Radio Gold in April, 2015 said “When we are talk about corruption, we are not talking about the peasant farmer who struggles constantly to produce the food that we eat and lives in the thatch-roofed house without windows and is susceptible to snake bites. They are not the people engaged in corruption. The most educated, the mangers of the national economy, people who went to Harvard University, the Oxford graduate and those with double honours from the University of Ghana… these are the people who are in the position to be corrupt and are indeed most corrupt” –

WAY FORWARD

Now I turn my attention to what can be done to strengthen the efficacy of the anti-corruption measures.

I start by quoting H.E the President, then NPP Presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo speaking on the conundrum of corruption at the Great Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. (October, 2012)

“Corruption has to be defeated; it reduces revenue to the state; it holds back our economic growth; it leads to the flight of capital out of the country and it inflates the cost of running government. It results in a loss of legitimacy and respect for legally constituted authority. Corruption demoralises honest people and fills them with uncertainty, mistrust and fear. It stifles initiative and creativity and dampens motivation. It undermines the merit system of rewards, appointments and success and it encourages mediocrity, laziness and incompetence.” –

Ultimately, all parts of society must share the responsibility for containing corruption because all are willing or unwilling participants. Each corrupt transaction requires a “buyer” and a “seller.” The government is responsible for dealing with the public and civil servants who engage in extortion and bribery but it is businesses and individuals who offer bribes to the politician, the public and civil servants to obtain certain advantages.

An active, involved and empowered citizenry is indeed essential to any anti-corruption campaign.

We as a people can only achieve real gains when the Ghanaian society changes its expectations and understanding of its entitlement to a government that is not corrupt. This is at the height of what we should do. We should have a paradigm shift and expect that our leaders, starting from political, traditional, religious, corporate and social leadership should not be corrupt.

For their part, government leaders politicians and bureaucrats must provide the political will and political courage to address all forms of corruption. An example of the political courage is what President Nana Addo exhibited when he called off the bluff of the political blackmailers involved in galamsey when they threatened that they will not vote for him if he deals with the cancan of illegal mining.

In Ghana we have the necessary laws already, what we need to is to implement the laws. There is the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP) (2012-2021), which is very detailed plan and we should just make it work. Sections of it include

• Public Sector Reform

• Strengthening Key Anticorruption and Law Enforcement Agencies

• Public Awareness and Education

• Focus on Prevention on corruption

• Improving Investigation and Prosecution (The weakest link in the #StopGalamsey Fight currently is the Justice Delivery System – Investigation, Prosecution and the sentencing)

• Creating an Enabling Environment

• There roles for several stakeholders within the document, these include

• The Executive

• Public Sector Organisations and Corporation

• Parliament

• Anti-Corruption and Law Enforcement Agencies

• Independence Governance Institutions

• National Development Planning Commission

• The Media

• Civil Society

• Private Sector

• Traditional and Religious bodies

• Political Parties

• Development Partners

• I will add our schools and teachers

We are in the 6th year of the NACAP how well have we done. That is the problem, we have this beautiful plan but how much of the citizenry know about it and how are policing it.

I will share the soft copy of the plan with all of you, so we need to familiarize ourselves with it and make sure that we are executing it. That is the bane of the Ghanaian. The lack of execution and enforcement of plans. That has to change.

Other solutions I will want to also share are;

The Separation of power should work

The legislature should play their vital role of holding the executive accountable by providing public scrutiny, holding parliamentary debates and questioning the actions of the Executive. This role parliament must play even more effectively. We need to work on the current system where parliament plays second fiddle to the executive and is perceived as a rubber stamp. The unbridled partisanship within parliament should stop. Members should have allegiance to their constituents and Ghana 1st before their parties. That will only happen when the current system changes winner takes all stops. We should look into the possibility of introducing some proportional representation in parliament.

We should also look into the current situation where we have overly centralized power in the hands of only one person the President. It makes him overly powerful and places too burden and pressure on him.

The Executive must also ensure that anti-corruption agencies, including the judiciary receive the necessary resources, capacity and independence to fulfill their mandates. The Executive must also adhere to and enforce Codes of Conduct and ethics that seek to regulate the actions of public officers and politically-nominated staff.

The Executive must firmly enforce the law against public officers who engage in extortion, bribery and other forms of corruption, not considering the political coloration of the person involved. Government leaders and bureaucrats must individually and collectively provide the political will to address all forms of corruption.

The Judiciary must expeditiously try corruption offences prosecuted before them. The process of automating the courts must be continued in earnest across the country. The former Chief Justice showed leadership by dealing expeditiously with allegations of corruption within the Judiciary when Anas exposed them. That should continue and all allegations must be scrupulously investigated and appropriate action taken.

We the Citizens have a role to play. Do you know what your local assemblies are doing on your behalf? What about parliament and the executive? We need to change our practice of democracy where all we do is vote every 4 years and leave the politicians and the public officers to do what they want with private sector. We need to be engaged in the political process

Introduce technology that reduces or eliminates person-to-person transaction

It will be helpful to apply technology to create remoteness between officials offering services and those patronizing it. This takes out the temptation to offer or demand a bribe. ICT and especially mobile technology offer us the platform to make transactions e-based and also make them transparent.

It has been argued that state procurement is one hot avenue for corruption. We have a good procurement act as an anti-corruption measure. It has elaborate procedures but every Ghanaian agrees that its efficacy in dealing with procurement corruption is not up to speed. The processes remain too obscure from public scrutiny. We can introduce more transparency into it by going fully electronic. In Chile, for example, government procurement processes are e-based to introduced more transparency and fairness in public procurement. Their e-procurement is through a portal called Chilecompra, which the country launched in 2003. It is acclaimed worldwide as one of the most transparent and efficient public procurement systems.

In my search, I found this about the system:

“ Chilecompra has the mission to create value for the public market in order to ensure that public buyers conduct their activities in a transparent and efficient way, and providers have greater access to the market. Its strategic objectives include increasing the effectiveness of supply and demand within the public purchase market; meeting the needs of market clients; and establishing the framework for a sustainable public market guaranteeing ample market access.”

It is an internet portal and everybody who wishes to know what is happening there can go there, so it won’t take a politician to abuse sole sourcing and find a plethora of reasons to justify it even if the justification beats common sense. We need to shine a lot of light and sunshine on our procurement processes from the national to the local levels. We the citizenry need to take active interest in what is going on.

Make the anti-corruption crusade the people’s crusade

In addition, the government and all other types of leaders should make it a priority to sensitize the citizenry to rise up against corruption and make the anti-corruption crusade the people’s crusade. But why will the people who benefit more from corruption want to change the status quo. So lets not leave it to the politicians alone to fix it.

CSOs need to lead the charge to make the Anti-corruption crusade the people’s crusade.

Ordinary people should be helped to understand the negative effects corruption has on the economy and on their own wellbeing. If they realize the amount of money we lose to corruption, they will feel the need to fight the canker.

Statistics on how much corruption cost Ghana may be difficult to come by but we can take a cue from the continent-wide estimated figure which the African Union put out in 2002, which was $150 billion a year – this, from a continent stricken by poverty and always begging for development assistance!

It is interesting to know that in 2008, aid from development countries to the continent amounted to $26 billion, with $22.5 billion of it coming to Sub-Saharan Africa (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). This is how hard corruption can hit citizens, compare $150 billion a year cost of corruption to the $26 billion aid per year. What kind of people are we?

Lets come home, Franklin Cudjoe, President of IMANI Africa, on 15th May 2016 said “…My estimation about grand corruption in this country looking at the numbers from the Auditor General’s report on an annual basis and doing an extrapolation looks to me about $3 billion a year. I think it may be conservative but I think it is significant.” I agree with him that he is underestimating it, but note this is what comes to Auditor Generals attention. What can we do with $3 billion a year, if we explain this to my Auntie in Tsiame that the children we are losing to basic cholera could be eradicated if we provide toilets to all Ghanaian homes and stopped open defecation with this amount, it will bring the cost of corruption real to them.

That is why I am happy with the Christian Service University College for taking up this topic. You need to entrench it within your curriculum. You need to get your faculty and students to research topic of corruption and its effect on Ghana and Africa so as to shape our way of doing things. Provide us with data that helps us tell the story better and hold leaders and ourselves a to account.

If the anti-corruption agencies, with keen support of all including our educations institutions, religious bodies and the government, drum such revelations into the citizenry, they certainly will be angered to rise to fight against corruption and apply the anti-corruption measures.

Reduce or cut tall bureaucracy in processes

In spite of the anti-corruption measures, there are loopholes that people still exploit. Processes for acquiring services from the state should be reviewed drastically to take out those that are cumbersome and leads to process abuse for personal gains.

Additionally we need to

• Go back to our values of questioning the source of the wealth of everybody

• We need to question some of our cultural practices of gift giving

• We need to stop the unbridled partisanship

• We as citizens should stop over burdening our politicians especially the parliamentarians. Our expectations of them, says to them that go and steal

• We should stop glorifying corruption and call it what it is – thievery. We should stop the practice where the anti corruption systems and justice delivery setup is like the spider web, it catches the small inserts and allows the big creatures to fall through. He steals a goat and he is sentence to serve a prison sentence but when we inflate contracts to the tunes of millions of dollars we call it corruption and nothing happens.

• Political parties must raise higher the bar of integrity in order to invigorate the fight against corruption. The EC should ensure that disclose their sources of funding. The Presidential and parliamentary candidates of political parties should also publish their sources of funding on their respective party websites.

• They must enhance the scale of transparency, accountability and fair-play in their internal operations in order to better contribute to the fight against corruption. They should deal with vote buying and monecracy within their internal politics.

• Pass the RTI

• Reform the assets declaration process

• Continue the automation of our courts

• Professional bodies in Ghana should hold their people to their codes of ethics and promote professionalism and ethical standards. There should be peer reviews. We are one of the groups that are letting the country down.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, the major point I have made here today is that the greatest challenge to the efficacy of the anti-corruption measures is human and we can deal with that by up holding and extolling the values of integrity and honestly while replacing human participation in transaction with electronic processes.

We should also make the citizens understand why they should help to make the measures work because our collective welfare will be enhanced it they work.

I end by agreeing with Abdul Kalam

“ If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are 3 societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.”

As a perpetual optimist I agree with this unknown author when she says

I have realized why corrupt politicians and their cronies do not improve quality of public schools. They are terrified of educated voters. Yes corruption is the world worst disease today and the only cure is transparency that is driven by a knowledgeable, critical and questioning populace. Yes Christian Service University College this is your mandate you need to walk the talk and ensure you produce students who will live your creed of faith, integrity and scholarship. Continue to shape the country’s compass to be one of high integrity

God Bless our Home land Ghana.

Source: http://www.ashigbey.com

October 14, 2017