The Role of Office of the Special Prosecutor in Protecting National Resources

The Office of the Special Prosecutor is the latest experiment in fighting corruption. It has been demonstrated that the mere enactment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act is no guarantee of the success of the President’s and the Government’s intention to fight corruption. It is just a beginning.

It has been shown that the success of this latest experiment in combating corruption and thereby protecting national resources will depend on the extent to which ministries; departments and agencies of government with responsibility to cooperate with the Office, collaborate with it so as to achieve the vision of the President who championed the setting up of the Office.

The present situation where critical ministries and agencies have failed or refused to produce public records on demand so as to aid the Office in critical investigations of offences running into millions of cedis, clearly demonstrates that there is a divergence between the President and his Government’s anti-corruption vision and that of some of his appointees.

This paper has shown and asserted that the extent to which the role of the Office in protecting the nation’s resources succeeds or fails like previous experiments since independence in 1957, will depend on the way the President and his Government’s anti-corruption vision is supported by or obstructed by his political and other public office appointees. The personality and unblemished reputation of the first Special Prosecutor posited against the bi-partisan pressures to have him removed from office by the Courts, cannot be the solution to the intractable problem of effectively and efficiently protecting the nation’s resources which have festered since independence.

The success of the massive bi-partisan pressure to tacitly influence decisions of the Courts on the qualification or otherwise of the first Special Prosecutor which has lasted before his appointment on 23rd February 2018 and continues over one and half years now will only demonstrate to the electorate in Ghana and the international community the absurdity of Ghana’s commitment to the goal of combating corruption and protecting the nation’s resources through the instrumentality of an independent and impartial Special Prosecutor.

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