The spokesman for the Chief Imam, Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu, has refuted suggestions that the current Constitution of Ghana must be amended for the nation to be able to fight corruption.
According to him, the current Constitution has enough legislation to deal with the menace of corruption, but the issue is with the people who are supposed to make the laws work.
"Do we actually need a new constitution? What is the matter with us? Some are debating that we have a very good constitution even in its current form. But it is the human begins.
"Is it the Constitution that causes us to be corrupt? It is the human beings. Are there not the checks and balances provided?" he asked in a GTV interview monitored by GhanaWeb on Thursday, February 02, 2023.
Sheikh Shaibu said that even though most Ghanaians are religious, most of them are not morally upright, which is why the level of corruption in the country is so high.
"Every Sunday, I hear very powerful preachers preaching. I am a preacher; every Friday, I go to the pulpit and talk to people, and others like me do so. Why are we in this kind of moral mess?" he questioned.
He added that the National Service Scheme, which is supposed to give Ghanaian graduates a sense of patriotism, is now bridled with corruption.
Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu made these remarks while reacting to Ghana’s position on the latest Global Corruption Perception Index.
Ghana once again placed 73rd in the 2022 edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which was released on Tuesday, January 31, 2023.
This is the third consecutive time Ghana has ranked in the same spot out of the 180 countries surveyed.
This means Ghana has not made any progress in the fight against corruption since 2020.
The results announced by Transparency International (TI) saw Ghana score 43 out of a total of 100.
The CPI Score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption and ranges between 100 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt).
Watch the interview below:
IB/BOG
Spokesperson for the Chief Imam, Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu