Corruption fight will get worse if we give up – CDD

Kojo Asante, Director, Advocacy and Policy Management of CDD-Ghana

Director, Advocacy and Policy Management of CDD-Ghana Kojo Asante has said that giving up on the fight against corruption and seeing it as a normal thing will only worsen the situation in the country.

He added the system that makes Ghanaians believe that “who you know” is the only way out is scary as societies decay with this.

He called on stakeholders and government not to give up on the fight against corruption because it will be too late to fight it in the future.

“I am afraid if we get to a point that we normalize corruption, we are doomed. If we give up (on the fight against corruption) it’s going to get worse. We need to be careful because society decays like this. If it takes money for you to get your way in everything, do you know how difficult it will be if you are poor in this society? It’s only going to be a society for the few. If you think it is difficult now, you multiply that by 3 to the point that where everybody believes that its the only way you can do things and you can’t go around, that will be a society that you don’t want to live in and that is really what is scary, we have to find a way to arrest it otherwise it will be very difficult for us to address it in the future” He said

The Centre for Democratic Development’s (CDD), in 2019 said over GHc 9.6 billion has been lost from the public purse as a result of corrupt practices in the country since 2017.

“Weak governance and corruption hurt every nation, and the poor are often the hardest hit. Over the years, Ghana has lost a great fortune to corruption, and since its inception in November 2017, Corruption Watch alone has discovered 9.6 billion Ghana cedis stolen from the public purse. Everyone here – every individual and every organization has an obligation to act with integrity, expose corrupt practices, and more importantly, help retrieve funds that have been embezzled.”

Corruption Watch is CDD-Ghana’s foremost anti-corruption campaign and seeks to promote integrity in public life by demanding and activating the responsiveness and accountability of all actors in the anti-corruption space to ensure corruption cases are investigated, suspects prosecuted and stolen funds recovered.