The Ghana Integrity Initiative has asked government to show more commitment to the fight against corruption to build trust and public confidence.
“We have not seen much leadership in the fight against corruption in the country. We need to see bold initiatives from government through effective preventive mechanism against corruption and administrative sanction to deter potential corrupt officials”.
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One of the rare times I made it through the international airport in Lagos with nary a request for a bribe, I was left feeling spooked. After all, during previous visits to Nigeria, I had had valuables seized right before my eyes under false pretenses; I had been detained in a cell awaiting ransom; and I had even once watched in alarmed disbelief as uniformed men with guns boarded my flight and extorted money from passengers, along with bottles of champagne from the crew, right there on the tarmac.
This time, as I exited the terminal, just as I was being greeted by a prearranged driver, a man in plainclothes approached to demand my passport. The driver whispered for me to ignore him and keep walking fast, after which the man in plainclothes flashed a gun under his shirt and said, “OK, you’ll see.”
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According to Mrs Juliet Aboagye-Wiafe, President of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Ghana, the work of internal auditors facilitate good corporate governance and compliance. These in turn ‘provide strong inputs for organisational or business sustainability and prevent corporate scandals, fraud and failures.’
Mrs Aboagye-Wiafe reportedly said this at the IIA’s 2019 Annual National Internal Audit and Governance Conference.
In June 2019, Auditor-General Mr. Daniel Yao Domelevo also stated that it is better to prevent corruption. Therefore, making internal auditors independent is one of the control mechanisms that government can put in place to prevent corruption. He even suggested to the Presidency to consider the inclusion of the Director General of the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) in Government’s Economic Management Team to help control expenditure within certain strategic sectors. He took the view that internal auditors would provide timely information on lapses within the Public Financial Management system to enable the E. M. T. take judicious measures to address identified inefficiencies.
In spite of these authorities speaking favourably on internal auditors, Corruption Watch has come across cases from its investigations in which some internal auditors have allegedly been professionally abused and harassed for refusing to be compromised.
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A Corruption Watch investigation has found that the deputy MASLOC CEO, Hajia Abibata Shani Mahama Zakaria facilitated the use of MASLOC money to allegedly induce delegates in the Yendi Constituency during the recent New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary primaries.
The investigation uncovered that she used state resources for her personal gain just as other candidates were also captured by Corruption Watch inducing delegates with money, machinery and appliances in seven regions monitored by Corruption Watch.
In the Yendi Constituency, aspirants even gave out food packages including a bowl of dried fish, a box of Maggi and a pack of powdered salt.
These are part of findings from widely conducted investigations that were carried out before, during and immediately after the NPP primaries in the Ashanti, Bono, Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, Northern and Western regions.
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