John Mahama
The anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), says corruption is “still a serious problem” in Ghana, in spite of the country’s efforts at fighting the canker headlong.
It follows the country’s drop of four percentage points in the latest ranking of the TI’s corruption perception index (CPI) that puts Ghana at 70 out of 176 countries in the world – after gaining 43 points out of a possible clean score of 100.
The anti-corruption campaigners also ranked Ghana the second worst decliner in the 2016 Index.
“This score is the lowest in Ghana’s CPI scores since 2012 when CPI scores became comparable,” it pointed out.
Ghana scored 47 points in the 2015 ranking and the anti-corruption group said it had seen no improvement, pointing out that the 43 points were a likely reflection of the many exposes of public sector corruption in the last few years under the John Mahama administration.
TI observed that the dissatisfaction of Ghanaian citizens with the government’s corruption record was reflected in the December 7, 2016 general election.
The 2016 CPI score indicates that in spite of Ghana’s efforts at fighting corruption, the canker is still a serious problem.
It cited the police recruitment scam, the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Authority (GYEEDA) scandal, Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) scandal, GH?144 million judgement debt saga, GRA/Subah scandal, the infamous Woyome’s GH?51.2 million judgment debt saga and the Smarty’s bus rebranding deal as some of the events that informed the assertion that corruption is still a problem.
The TI continued that that was likely compounded by government’s perceived inability to fully resolve high-profile corruption cases.
African Picture
In Africa, Botswana once again was the first with a score of 60 points, ranking 35 globally, followed by Cape Verde with a score of 59 points and ranking 38 globally.
The third and fourth were occupied by Mauritius and Rwanda with both scoring 54 and 50 points respectively in the global ranking. Namibia and Sao Tome and Principe scored 52 and 46 respectively and ranked 53 and 62 globally.
The report indicates that despite being a model for stability in the region, Ghana, together with other six African countries, has significantly declined. It mentioned countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya that have failed to improve their scores on the index.
Overall, only five out of 46 African countries that qualified to be captured by the index scored above 50. “Many African countries dominated the bottom of the CPI with Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Libya, Guinea Bissau, Eritrea and Angola scoring 10, 11, 14, 14, 16, 18 and 18 with rankings of 176, 175, 170, 168, 164 and 164 respectively.
Denmark and New Zealand performed best with scores of 90 points, closely followed by Finland (89) and Sweden (88).
The corruption perceptions index is the leading global indicator of perceived public sector corruption, offering a yearly snapshot of the relative degree of corruption by ranking countries from all over the globe.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi