The report indicated that the fight against corruption in Ghana was low after data gathered in the survey pointed to that.
According to the report, 76 per cent of Ghanaians perceived corruption to be on the increase in Ghana behind South Africa and before Nigeria which made the top three countries with the least effort in fighting corruption.
But President Mahama says this has been misconstrued to mean that Ghana was the second most corrupt nation in Africa; an assertion he described as “false.”
Speaking at the Second High Level conference on the National Anti Corruption Action plan in Accra, the President said “this report was not an index and did not seek to rank countries in order of corruption perception as the CPI normally does.
“The simple and straight forward question that respondents were asked was that ‘How has the level of corruption in your country changed in the past year? Has it increased, has it decreased or has it stayed the same?
“Suddenly in our highly charged partisan political environment, this survey was wrongly interpreted as placing Ghana as the second most corrupt country in Africa,” he said.
President Mahama said “this is absolutely false and for emphasis, this is absolutely false. Despite all attempts by institutions that sponsored the report to correct this wrong interpretation, leading political figures have continued to spread this false impression.
“What can be motivation for a section of our population to be so obsessed with trying to claim such an undignified title for ourselves at the expense of our nation’s dignity and our international image?
“Sad to say many other media networks including our own respected Daily Graphic also run along with this falsehood and got the entire nation engage in a conversation that should not have taken place.”
He further indicated that “not only did the conversation end up misleading the Ghanaian public, it indeed also gave our country an undeserved negative image amongst the committee of nations and the international community as a whole.”
By Martin Asiedu-Dartey|3news.com|Ghana
Twitter: @NewsyMartin