The Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of Transparency International (TI), Mary Awelana Addah, has expressed concerns about President Akufo-Addo’s lack of attention to the issues of corruption in his Tuesday (Feb. 27) State of the Nation Address.
According to the anti-corruption body, they were equally expectant, just like many Ghanaians, to hear what President Akufo-Addo has to say about the fight against corruption in the country.
Speaking to Alfred Ocansey on Ghana Tonight yesterday [February 29], Mary Addah pointed out the address ought to have given Ghanaians a “situational analysis” of corruption issues over the past years.
“We know for sure that this is an account of all that has been going on, the situational analysis of what we have done, what we are doing, and what we seek to do as a people,” said Mary Ada, adding that, “for anybody to talk about governance and neglect to speak about corruption, I do not know what to say.”
She added, “But certainly that is a matter that needed some attention from the President, I must say.”
However, Mary Addah further noted that it was not “out of the moon” for President Akufo-Addo to shy away from issues of corruption in such an address.
According to Mrs Addah, the President in recent times has “sought to move away from speaking about anything concerning corruption.”
“It is either mentioned in passing over the years as his tenure progressed; even last year, I believe so, the last three years there has been some…maybe it is the omission of the speechwriters but I think there has been some deliberate ploy to remove the subject matter from the discourse,” said Awelana Addah.
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“But that rather brings the issue to the fore because people then pay more attention to what is happening if we are talking about the subject on a daily basis,” she stressed.
The executive director of GII, a major stakeholder in the anti-corruption space, emphasised that a State of the Nation address can never be silent on “our anti-corruption moves” and efforts to curb the menace.
She continued by indicating that the President’s refusal to touch on the issue of corruption may be “an attempt to downplay anti-corruption” efforts.
Responding to what could make the President decline to touch on anti-corruption issues, she explained that both the policymaker and the implementor might want to get attention to other issues instead.
“Two things; one will be that the policy maker and the implementor might be seeking to attract some listenership when it comes to other issues and for that matter, seek to downplay the issues around anti-corruption,” she said.
However, she maintained that such an approach would be detrimental to the country’s success in the fight against the canker.
This, she said, is because Ghana is a country that has been confronted with the negative effects of corruption, stating that “we have seen study after study, we have seen evidence after evidence of how corruption affects our lives.”
The State of the Nation is an annual address to Parliament given by the President of the Republic covering the economic, social, and financial state of the country according to Article 67 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana.