One of the finest hands-on the pen, Manasseh Azure Awuni, as usual, has penned a thesis to add his voice to corruption and scandals which is eating up his motherland, Ghana.
In a lengthy post on his official Facebook page, he made it emphatic that from the look of things in the past four years under Akufo Addo as Ghana’s president, the first gentleman of the land has proved that he does not have the commitment to fight corruption in Ghana
Read below from the hands of Manasseh Azure Awuni:
I have read all the 27-paged response by the former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu, to President Akufo-Addo’s reaction to his resignation. I read part yesterday and concluded this morning.
The response has a lot of substance, and anybody who says it is empty did not read it or that person did not read with an objective mind.
I must, however, point out that Martin Amdiu poisoned the substance of his response with needless elaboration, an overly intemperate language and a rather needless attack on Prof. H Kwasi Prempeh, one of the extremely few civil society advocates who have proven in these last four years that they stand for what is right and the interest of the state.
There is nothing wrong with him being the president’s friend. I am (or “was”, depending on how the president perceives me now) President Akufo-Addo’s friend, but that friendship does not say I should not criticise him when he goes wrong.
John Mahama was and is still my friend, but that doesn’t mean I should not point it out to him when his policies go wrong. So there’s nothing wrong with Prof. Prempeh being the president’s friend.
I have been uncharitable to Martin Amidu in my writings, media interviews and in my recent lecture, but he is my friend and I visit him at home and we talk. So the point about seeing H Kwasi Prempeh in the Jubilee House is needless. No fair-minded person who has followed him keenly will doubt what he stands for. He has been critical of Akufo-Addo’s presidency and that does not take away his right to comment on a matter when it does not favour Martin Amidu.
Martin Amidu should have learnt from the language the presidency used in its letter to him. The presidency used a measured and mature language that won the admiration of even its critics. A strong language in a paragraph or two could have conveyed Martin Amidu’s outrage if he strongly felt the need to do so.
As a writer, I know some a certain tone must be used to drum home the needed effect, but to use the same tone throughout takes away from the message.
Having said that, Martin Amidu’s response puts in context the impression conveyed by the presidency that he got all he wanted and did not spend. The issue about his office has also be explained. Unfortunately, Martin Amidu buried that deep down the response and, in a country that hates reading, not many will ever get to that.
From what I know and from what I have read from both Amidu and the presidency, one thing is clear: President Akufo-Addo does not have the commitment to fight corruption.
It is the reason I told Martin Amidu long time ago to resign if he could not bulldoze his way through the concrete maze of frustrations designed to make whoever wanted to take on the establishment fail.
It is rather strange that Martin Amidu only realised the president was not committed to the fight against corruption when he finished the Agyapa report and the president asked him to “shelve” it so that he (the president) would deal with it.
When Martin Amidu’s friend, the Auditor General, was hounded out of office because of his work against Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo, Mr. Amidu did not need any more revelation to know that Akufo-Addo was not committed to fighting corruption.
It is also worth pointing out that apart from the interference, Martin Amidu’s extremely rigid posture and human relations could have contributed to his failure. It is possible to be flexible without compromising on your integrity or values.
To succeed as a corruption fighter, you must work with others. You must work with the good people and the bad people. You must learn to play your cards well and use people to get what you want without knowing you’re using them. You cannot be an island and succeed.
If you stand on a moral Afadzato and perceive or deal with all the rest from the valley of sin, you will achieve very little or nothing.
We are back to a basement below the ground floor as far as the Office of the Special Prosecutor and its fight against corruption is concerned.
And the general fight against corruption from the perspective of the media, civil society, state institution such as the Auditor General, has been made worse than it was when our Anti-Corruption Moses took the oath of office on January 7, 2017.
