Public trust in presidency still high – Afrobarometer report

Afrobarometer Communications Coordinator for Anglophonoe West Africa, Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye Sanny, has revealed that 58 percent of Ghanaians still have trust in the president and his officials.

This was revealed in the Afrobarometer Round 8 survey which was released by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD).

“The army, religious leaders and the presidency are the most trusted public institutions in the country. So we have 72 percent saying that they trust the army, 63 percent saying they trust the religious leaders a lot or somewhat and 58 percent saying they trust the president and the officials and his office a lot. While opposition political parties, local government officials and tax officials are the least trusted.”

The report also indicated that Ghana Police Service is still the highest among public institutions as the latest Afrobarometer survey of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) indicates that 57 per cent of Ghanaians think the police is corrupt most or all of the time while 32 per cent think they are corrupt some of the time.”

The police topped 13 institutions that were studied in the survey. The media was the least corrupt among them. While 20 per cent of the public thinks that the media are corrupt most or all of the time, 61 per cent of them said they are only corrupt sometimes.

The findings indicate that “the police, judges and magistrates, Members of Parliament, civil servants, and tax officials are most widely perceived as corrupt” among key public officials in the country.

Afrobarometer conducts face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent’s choice with nationally representative samples.

The Afrobarometer team in Ghana, led by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), interviewed 2,400 adult Ghanaians between 16 September and 3 October 2019.

A sample of this size yields country-level results with a margin of error of +/-2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

Previous surveys were conducted in Ghana in 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2017.