Co-founder of Afrobarometer and the Centre For Democratic Development (CDD) Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi has flayed President Akufo Addo for the curious treatment meted out to Ghana’s immediate past Auditor-General, Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo.
Professor Boadi describes the act as “shameful.” Professor Boadi’s opinion carries significant weight, having helped set up the non-partisan pan-African research institution (Afrobarometer) that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, the economy and society in Africa.
“As for the President’s [Akufo-Addo] credibility in terms of anti-corruption, I’m afraid to say it is in tatters. It has been in tatters for a while but this puts a nail in the coffin,” Prof Gyimah-Boadi slammed the President.
In an exclusive interview on CITI TV monitored by Whatsup News, Professor Boadi said the forced retirement of Mr. Domevelo symbolizes a clear situation where the presidency was not ready to work with institutions or leadership it has not appointed.
“I think the worse of it is that we have a presidency that is increasingly looking like it has difficulty working with institutions and leadership that it has not appointed. Then, the Domelevo incident, or debacle is for me a clear example of that,” Prof Gyimah-Boadi said
Earlier in 2020, the President had forced Domelevo to take a 167-day mandatory leave because he had surcharged Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo over Maafo’s dubious payment of US$1million dollars to a UK company for no work done.
Then when Domelevo was just returning to work, the Audit Service Board chaired by Prof. Dua Agyemang, who has been the point man in the whole hounding campaign against Domelevo wrote to him informing him that his date of birth has changed from 1961 to 1960 and that he is therefore deemed to have retired.
The Audit Service Board also claimed Domelevo was a Togolese.
Many were hoping that for once, President Akufo-Addo whose administration is seen as the most corrupt in the country’s history deflect the urge to witch-hunt Domelevo and cure some of the perceptions that he was directly helping a corrupt Audit Service Board to hound out Domelevo who has countered many of the reported corrupt deals at the Audit Service.
But President Akufo Addo took the bait once more and forced Domelevo out, despite him being 59 years old and not 60 years old as the Audit Service had presented. The retirement age is 60 years in Ghana.
As the Coalition of anti-corruption CSOs points out, the forced retirement of Domelevo is coming at a time when two cases bordering on his independence from the executive are still pending.
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