Akufo-Addo Has Not Taken Corruption Fight Seriously – Vitus Azeem

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was not serious when he promised to fight corruption, Anti-Corruption campaigner, Vitus Azeem has said.

He told Alfred Ocansey on the Sunrise show on 3FM Wednesday January 26 that the perceived corruption cases that have come up since Mr Akufo-Addo became president, is an indication of the lack of seriousness in the war against graft.

“We have elected a leader who has promised us he is going to fight corruption but he has not taken it seriously looking at the issues springing up – Agyapa deal and the likes.

“Sometimes he and his associates are mentioned in allegations of corruption. The fact that their names are mentioned is a big worry. When you surround yourself with family and friends when they do something wrong you cannot correct them,” the former Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) said.

His comments come after the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released on Tuesday Janury 25 by Transparency International (TI) scored Ghana 43 out of a possible clean score of 100 and ranked the country 73 out of 180 countries/territories included in the 2021 index.

This CPI score indicates that, Ghana failed to make progress in the fight against corruption in the year 2021 as the score of 43
is the same as the country’s 2020 score. Ghana’s current performance is still below 50 which is the expected average and thus leaves much to be desired.

“This CPI score indicates that, Ghana failed to make progress in the fight against corruption in the year 2021 as the score of 43 is the same as the country’s 2020 score,” said Ghana Integrity Initiative, the local chapter of Transparency International, in a statement.

A trend analysis of Ghana’s CPI scores over the past decade, presented in the chart below shows that, the country declined by 2 points.

Equatorial Guinea, Somalia and South Sudan have the lowest scores in the region.

“The 2021 index reveals that, Botswana (55), Lesotho (38), Eswatini (32), Niger (31), Nigeria (24), Comoros (20) and South Sudan (11) are all at historic lows. In the last decade, 43 countries in the region have either declined or made no significant progress,” the statement added.

On the global level, Denmark (88), Finland (88) and New Zealand (88) top the chart as the least corrupt countries, while Somalia (13), Syria (13) and South Sudan (11) remain at the bottom of the corruption perception index.

Source: 3news.com