Editorial: Corruption Lessons from Ghana

The little piece of drama playing out today in near-by Republic of Ghana has, once more, powerfully played out for global appreciation how seriously different nations on the continent take to heart their avowed anti-corruption crusades.

As the report goes, Ghana's transport minister, Mr. Richard Anane, recommended for sack by a commission for Human Right Administrative Justice, last September for 'abuse of office', had instead resigned to better contest the findings in court.

Mr. Anane was investigated for 18 months over how he could pay $100,000 to his American mistress who he met at an HIV/AIDS conference in 2001 when he was the Health minister.

The liaison in 2001 with U.S. health worker, Alexandria O'Brien, which later soured, had resulted in the birth of a son for the minister, Anane.

Investigators had sought to know how Mr. Anane, who is a medical doctor, could afford, on a minister's salary, $100,000 he sent to Ms O'Brien, his woman in the United States of America.

Finding him guilty of abuse of office, the investigating commission had asked for Dr. Anane's sack.

Three issues are clear in the foregoing which cast both the Ghanaian society and its leaders as a notch above the rest of the pack in its zero-tolerance for public malfeasance.

Number one is that investigators could determine that ex-minister Anane indeed paid such money that he could not have earned legitimately as a minister. Added to that is the irony, not lost on the nation's opposition, that a Minister of Health on an anti-AIDS conference had unprotected sex that resulted in a child. How committed was Minister Anane and what example was he setting for his nation's young people?

The last issue of Anane's resignation to better fight these charges in court is even more remarkable in Africa where political and other public figures have lost all sense of propriety and shame, and would brazenly cling on to their offices even when the whole world knows that these figures are warts-infested and naked in their various publics' views.

It was an honourable example for Minister Anane to have resigned when he knew that the game was up. It is even more of a positive testimony to the transparent life-style of Ghanaians that they have shown a neutral intolerance for all shades and scales of corruption in their public officials' lives. This is not first. During the run-up to the 2002 Korea-Japan hosted World Cup, Ghana's minister of sports who claimed that the tens of thousands of cash in U.S. dollars kept in his custody as bonuses for the country's national football team, the Black Stars, were stolen with his brief case - in a hotel room.

The seemingly cock-and-bull story earned the minister a day in court and subsequent imprisonment. In addition, he was ordered to re-pay the stolen dollars!

Without sentiments, there are lessons other nations who have for long been ravaged by blatant, criminal behaviour and corruption in public and private lives could pick up.

We say this because corruption has universally been identified as one single, most destructive habit or practice that inhibits personal and collective development and growth of emerging nations.

More over, even African governments have awoken to the fact that low ranking in the global corruption index drives away development dollars in investment and aid.

It might well be that, because Ghanaians work for their money, not being afloat with passive oil-wealth like Nigeria, they are naturally inclined to questioning how their taxes are spent. Not so with other nationals in whose countries the slash-and-burn or drill-and-sell oil-based system operates.

Whatever be the case, or reason, the demonstration of civic right in questioning how their officials spend the little they are given is commendable.

That a minister found it more honourable to resign rather than be sacked for corruption is another worthy example that their Nigerian and other African counterparts should emulate. A situation where indicted, accused or convicted abusers of their public positions cling to office while impudently alleging one form of victimization or another, does not take the anti-corruption fight any further.

The civic apathy Nigerians demonstrate when clear abuses of their rights to decent living is committed by those that purport to serve the public, must change for attitude of demanding that public officers be accountable to the people.

Our skewed value system that absolves, glorifies and justifies wealth by all means, need a critical review.

It is a testimony to how much the world today appreciates and rewards transparent conduct of public affairs that lowly, cash-strapped nations like Ghana, Tanzania and others, are attracting more partnerships in development from foreign investors while those perceived to condone public corruption are not.

There can be no effective way of fighting corruption than by actually being seen to be fighting the cancer. Cosmetic gestures that merely slap the wrists of culprits end up sending the wrong signals to would-be corrupters of the system.