Ghana urgently needs visionary and decent leaders – Chief Justice

In the wake of a prevailing climate of corruption, Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood has qualified Ghana’s most urgent need as a need for visionary, decent and men of integrity.

She made this remark at the Banquet Hall of the State House in Accra during the 18th edition of the annual Ghana Journalist Awards.

The awards was under the theme “Promoting Healthy Partisanship and Fruitful Partnership in Governance : The Role of the Media”

“Ghana needs men of integrity, able, visionary and decent leaders urgently”, she said

In recent times, news of corruption and financial malfeasance has dominated the headlines for weeks.

The latest scandal involves the payment of Ghc144 million to Subah Infosolutions Ltd., a subsidiary of Zoomlion Ghana Ltd for no work done. The company was contracted in 2010 by the Ghana Revenue Authority to provide telecommunication traffic monitoring.

Last month, a presidential task force has uncovered massive fraud being perpetrated on the state by some companies operating in the country.

Several companies have managed to escape payment of approximately Ghc735 million import duties at bonded warehouses between 2005 and 2012 by conniving with officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority.

Whiles these are new cases, old ones remain recurrent news items as government struggles to retrieve €47 million illegally paid as judgment debt to Waterville while Ghc51 million was also paid to businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome.

The Woyome scandal will soon be entering its second anniversary and yet the public is yet to see the monies successfully retrieved.

Other scandals include a state-run Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency(GYEEDA)where some officials have been recommended for criminal prosecution. There is also a GH¢47m controversial guinea fowl, afforestation project sponsored by the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).

The Chief Justice noted that “greed, corruption, abuse of office, nepotism have become the bane of Ghana” and bemoaned the situation where political parties keep accusing each other of corruption whenever it is discussed.

According to the Chief Justice, this tendency undermines the country’s ability to deal with the canker of corruption.

She noted “unhealthy politicization of corruption only breeds equalization.”