Vitus Azeem, a former Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, has slammed the president claims suggesting that it is not his duty to clear or convict officials accused of corruption. He however urged the president to release reports of investigated alleged corruption cases instead of exonerating his appointees accused of same.
He explained that the president’s role required him to act on cases of corruption by taking responsibility to clear or convicted persons implicated in corruption scandals and insisted that “it is his job to clear or convict, he has referred the matters for investigations so he is expected to act on them.
“If he did not intend to act on them he should not have caused investigations to take place, it is not just a matter of saying go and investigate, if you refer a case to someone to investigate, you are only one allowed to release report, even those so-called independent bodies cannot release the reports.
“They
only submit it to the president who asked them to conduct investigations, we expect
to see more details in report rather than just coming to say they have been cleared,”
Mr Azeem fumed.
The President
had made the comment on Monday at the Ghana Bar Association Conference in
Takoradi, in the Western Region adding that he had never independently declared
any official innocent in instances where they were alleged to be involved in
corrupt deals.
“It is not my job to clear or convict any person
accused of wrongdoing or of engaging in acts of corruption, my job is to act on
allegations of corruption by referring to the issue or issues to the proper
investigative agencies for the relevant inquiry and necessary action and that
is exactly what has been done since I assumed the mantle of leadership on
January 7, 2017,” President Nana Akufo-Addo had stated.
Mr Azeem declared: “The citizenry voted because the president had promised that he was going to tackle corruption head on, so he raised our expectation, in my observation, he has failed because he may be personally incorruptible but he appoints people who do things wrongly but he has not done anything about it and he cannot be exonerated from blame, I think he has failed.” -citinewsroom.com
