The political class taught Ghanaians that one could become a millionaire overnight and most were eager to wait their turn for the opportunity to carve something for themselves out of the national cake.
Corruption thrives because we are all complicit, from the media, which celebrates those with dubious pasts, to the universities rewarding fraudulence with honorary degrees, to every voter who either abstains or returns inefficient, short-sighted men and women to the power.
Nothing in Ghana supports initiative or creativity. Those who dare to be original, those who possess the get-up-and-go boldness that built something concrete, are routinely discouraged and ultimately swayed by the realization that the only functioning business in Ghana is corruption.
In our opinion, corruption is not all about politics and politicians. Granted that the politicians, in the kind of democracy we practice, are in the commanding heights of the distribution of resources which provided them the leverage, in most cases, to help themselves with the nation’s milk pot in a manner that betrayed the trust reposed in them by the public.
The Civil service, for instance, is unarguably, the cesspool of corruption in the polity. But because they know how to cover their tracks, no one dares to look in their direction. No politician, no matter how powerful, can pull through a scam in the public sector without the active connivance of the civil servants.
Regrettably, when the hammer falls, the politicians take the flak while the civil servants walk away smelling fresh like rose.
We recall that it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a United States of America agency that exposed the rot in FIFA that brought down Sepp Blatter. We are not saying that EFCC should begin to make such international forays. That is not the point in our argument.
Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) must not see itself as an agency created solely to bring down erring members of the political class. Our argument is that, as an agency set up to stop economic and financial crimes, it must reinforce its structures so as to be able to fulfil its mandate which includes looking beyond the political class. There are other thieves in the civil service and the private sector who are collaborators of the politicians. EOCO must, necessarily, pursue, catch them and bring everyone to justice too.
We are indeed fantastically corrupt. Those who don’t want change have enough stolen funds to isolate themselves from the issues their negligence and stupendous greed caused.
We must fight against those who cornered the dividends of democracy in the region buying fleet of aeroplanes, building mansions in choice cities of the world while their people live in abject poverty. Let every Ghanaian wake up to this fact.
Why, under the guise of privatisation, have we sold key assets only to politically exposed persons without the ability to manage them effectively? Why do we keep treating our problems as if they were new, as opposed to resurgences of the same old unattended issues?
