Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Friday, December 11, 2015
Anti-graft body, the Ghana
Integrity Initiative (GII), has retracted and rendered an unqualified apology
to President John Dramani Mahama over a comment that he should turn to Nigeria’s
Muhamadu Buhari or Tanzania’s John Magufuli on how to fight corruption.
The GII had stated
that President Mahama should take a mentorship programme on how to fight
corruption from President
Muhamadu Buhari of Nigeria and President Magufuli of Tanzania .
GII said the news release was
not intended to denigrate the President but rather to urge him on to use all
his powers to “break the corruption chain.”
As part of activities marking
World Anti-Corruption Day, the GII accused the Mahama-led NDC government of
“just busy tickling with the symptoms” of corruption in the country and not
fighting it in a way other countries in the sub-region are doing.
They defended the recent ranking
of Ghana as second most corrupt in Africa by its parent body, Transparency
International (TI), before appealing to President Mahama “to turn to President
Muhamadu Buhari and President Magufuli for mentoring and act more swiftly to curb
corruption in this country.”
However, President Mahama at the
second high-level conference on the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan
(NACAP) in Accra on Wednesday rejected the 2nd Most Corrupt African
Country tag and said his government has been working hard in the fight against
corruption.
Retraction
“The attention of the Board and
Management of the Ghana Integrity Initiative has been drawn to the
inappropriate use of the word “mentoring” in the last paragraph of the press
release it issued yesterday to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day and
wish to apologise unreservedly to His Excellency the President of the Republic
of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, and indeed, the people of this country for the
use of the word. GII wishes to withdraw that entire sentence from the Press
Release,” GII Executive Director Vitus Adaboo Azeem said in a news release.
“We recognise that the President
is the first gentleman of the land and must be treated with all the necessary
respect from all the citizens of the country.
“We wish to emphasise that the
Press Release did not intend to denigrate the President and should not be seen
in that light. We sincerely call on all Ghanaians to avoid using this error to
divert the import of the Press Release which calls on the President to use all
his powers to break the corruption chain,” he added.
OccupyGhana
In a related development,
OccupyGhana, a pressure group, issued a release marking the Anti-Corruption Day
but insisted that “Ghana hasn't broken the corruption chain.”
“Instead of ridding itself of
the shameful tag of the new Gold Coast of corruption, Ghana under the current
dispensation has witnessed countless acts of high level corruption, political
corruption that is, until news broke of judicial corruption,” the statement said.
“The latter drove the last nail
in the coffin of corruption not to bury it, but to keep it alive. The last
resort for citizens to address grand political corruption was hugely
compromised, strengthening rather than helping to break the chain of corruption,”
it added.
OccupyGhana said it remains
resolute that “right thinking Ghanaians will not hope against hope but will
find solace in the hearts and minds of the very few upright men and women in
all levels and branches of government who are determined to end the corruption.
And, we urge every Ghanaian to join in the fight to break our chain of
corruption.”
The group said they will ensure
that “there is finality to the litany of administrative infractions and corrupt
acts we have identified and provided leadership, both administrative and legal,
in dealing with them. OccupyGhana will help break the chain of corruption for
God and Country.”
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