From Citizen Vigilante To Complainer-In-Chief?

By Justice Dzido On Jul 24, 2019

The Special Prosecutor’s Office has been in the news lately, though not for very pleasant reasons. The office was established with the mandate to investigate and prosecute cases of alleged corruption under the Public Procurement Act 2003(Act 663), and other corruption-related offences implicating public officers, political office holders and accomplices; but after eighteen long months, the perception is that it is not meeting the expectations of the people.

In fact, people have opined that President Akufo-Addo may be getting disappointed in choosing Martin Burns Kaisar Alamisi Amidu as the first Special Prosecutor in Ghana.

Before his appointment, those who knew him swore he was the right person for the job, based on his readiness and ability to expose corruption….even in court.

After his exploits in the notorious Woyome case, in which the country was saved some €47million illegal judgement debt payment, he was described in many publications as ‘the doyen of anti-corruption crusaders, a revolutionary not by the power of the gun, but by the power of his conscience to do what is right, for God and country’.

Today, the story about Mr. Amidu is directly the opposite. People believe they are not seeing the courage and zeal they saw in him ahead of the 2016 general elections, and that he is trying to justify his inability to work by giving excuses.

After about nine months of public outcry, the initial excuse was about lack of office furniture, insufficient office staff, and inadequate funding to investigate cases. In fact in November, 2018, he wrote an article: ‘THE WHITAKER SCENARIO – STIFLING INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIVE AGENCIES OF FUNDS’, which sounded insinuating.

And when funds were subsequently released, the ‘whining’ changed to interference and non-cooperation from state institutions.

In another article, CHALLENGES OF THE OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR IN FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN GHANA, Amidu lamented, inter alia:

“Heads of institutions wantonly disregard statutory requests made by the Office for information and production of documents to assist in the investigation of corruption and corruption-related offences, in spite of the fact that the President has on a number of occasions admonished them on such misconduct.

There have also been cases where some heads of institutions have made it their habit to interfere with and undermine the independence of this Office by deliberately running concurrent investigations falling within the jurisdiction of this Office with on-going investigations in this Office for the sole purpose of aborting investigations into corruption and corruption-related offences.

Some of the foregoing malfeasance has seriously affected the ability of this Office to deliver on its mandate, particularly when it must depend on some of these very institutions for seconded staff until it employs its own”.

THE NEW PUBLISHER wonders for how long Mr. Amidu will continue to throw his hands in despair while state looters walk free. The paper thinks he can do more than the epistles he is writing and the media interviews he is granting.

A bad tradesman, they say, usually quarrels with his tools. It is either he is sleeping on the job, or slipping off the job.