Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh, has added his voice to growing calls for far-reaching reforms to Ghana’s anti-corruption framework, warning that failure to innovate will leave key institutions ineffective.
His remarks form part of the broader national debate on the future of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP). Private legal practitioner Ace Ankomah has proposed significant structural changes aimed at strengthening the independence and effectiveness of criminal prosecutions in Ghana.
Ankomah argued that the establishment of the OSP was itself a tacit admission that the Attorney-General’s Office had struggled to effectively handle corruption and economic crime cases. Citing instances of political interference and the frequent use of nolle prosequi by successive governments to discontinue cases, he suggested merging the OSP, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), and the criminal prosecution wing of the Attorney-General’s Office into an independent National Prosecutions Authority.
According to him, such an authority should enjoy judicial-level independence, secure tenure, and financial autonomy to shield it from political influence.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Monday, December 8, Prof. Prempeh stressed that Ghana must be ready to adopt globally recognised tools such as lifestyle audits and unexplained wealth laws if the country hopes to tackle corruption in any meaningful way.
He noted that while these measures may seem unfamiliar locally, they are increasingly standard in mature democracies.
“This office [OSP] is new. We are not used to it… There are many things down the line that we could do to fight corruption that we are not used to and that we are resistant to, including lifestyle audit, unexplained wealth laws.
“This is where the trend is globally,” he said. “There is no other way, given the evolving technologies and everything, to fight corruption the way we are doing it.”
Prof. Prempeh argued that Ghana must embrace “more innovative ways” of tackling corruption and cannot continue operating under the traditional belief that prosecution is exclusively the Attorney-General’s mandate. He said Ghana’s entrenched constitutional and institutional arrangements around prosecutions make reform necessary.
“If we still want to remain in the same old mode that this is the AG’s function, this is constitutional, you can’t fight it. You just have to innovate around this problem,” he noted.
He agreed that Ghana may now require a constitutional solution to resolve the ongoing tensions surrounding anti-corruption prosecutions. “If we don’t, we will start litigating around it. The office will disappear.”
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