The Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), Dr. Eric Oduro Osae, has joined calls by many Ghanaians for the separation of the Office of the Attorney General from the Ministry of Justice.
According to Dr. Oduro, separating the two offices will be a very important step in fighting the menace of corruption in the country because it will allow the Attorney General (AG) to focus on prosecuting public officials who are fingered in acts of corruption, 3news.com reports.
He said that, in order to progress in the fight against corruption in Ghana, “I will insist that we separate the Attorney General from the Ministry of Justice.”
The Director-General of IAA, who made this call while reacting to recent reports on corruption in Ghana, said that the high rate of corruption indicated by the reports must be a wake-up call to Ghana.
“We should double our efforts in fighting corruption. A lot of people still don’t understand the intricacies of corruption and its impact. It also tells me that a lot of education is needed. It is a wake-up call for us to double our efforts towards the fight against corruption,” he is quoted to have said in an interview on TV3.
The Afrobarometer study conducted by the policy think tank, the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), showed that the Ghana Police Service, the Presidency and Parliament are the three most corrupt public institutions in Ghana.
About 65 percent of the respondents indicated that "most/all" Police officers were corrupt. Whiles 31% said that only some Police are corrupt.
With respect to the presidency and Parliament, 55% and 54% respectively stated that they were mostly corrupt, while 40% and 42% respectively said persons in the two institutions were partly corrupt.
Completing the top ten in descending order were the following: "Judges and magistrates, tax officials, Electoral Commission, civil Servants, MMDCEs, business executives and Assembly men and women."
The other five groups completing the list are traditional leaders, religious leaders, public media, private media and non-governmental organizations - from 11th to 15th spot respectively.
Per the report, three-quarters of respondents (77%) believed that corruption has increased with a mere 6%, holding the view that corruption is reducing. During the last survey in 2019, 53% of respondents said corruption was increasing.
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Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), Dr. Eric Oduro Osae