By Leo Nelson
Policy watchdog IMANI Centre for Policy and Education has thrown down the gauntlet to the Mahama administration, demanding that private sector actors complicit in defrauding the state be publicly identified, prosecuted and blacklisted.
In a hard-hitting policy brief, the think-tank warns that the fight against corruption will remain performative unless both public officials and their business collaborators face the music.
Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI’s founding president, has long argued that Ghana’s anti-corruption drive suffers from selective targeting. The latest brief insists that ‘businesses conspiring to defraud the state must be publicly named, sanctioned and blacklisted with their officers arrested, prosecuted and convicted.”
The timing is awkward for an administration that came to power promising a ‘resetting’ of governance. IMANI points to the government’s flagship anti-corruption initiative, Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL), which initially generated significant public optimism. ‘The optimism Ghanaians had in ORAL is fading, if it has not faded already,’ the brief states, pointing to limited prosecutions and convictions.
According to the think-tank’s Fiscal Recklessness Index reports, financial irregularities across government institutions reached 13.9 billion Ghana cedis in 2022 and 4.9 billion Ghana cedis in 2024.
The ministries of Finance, Food and Agriculture, Roads and Highways, and Health are among those implicated, with infractions spanning procurement, tax administration and cash management.
Kay Codjoe, an IMANI associate, has been particularly vocal on the need for prosecutions, describing the 1.4 billion cedi Strategic Mobilisation (SML) scandal as ‘structured looting under official supervision’ . The Office of the Special Prosecutor has confirmed it will initiate criminal proceedings against all implicated persons in that case.
IMANI takes aim at a recent parliamentary briefing by Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Nyarko Ampem, which highlighted irregularities but conspicuously failed to name private companies involved. The brief cites examples involving commercial banks, maize suppliers under the Dry Spell programme, and companies in grain transportation and defence vehicle supply.
The think-tank argues that corruption is a collaborative enterprise. ‘Corruption often involves collaboration between public officials and private businesses, making it essential for investigations to target both parties,’ the brief notes.
Bright Simons, IMANI’s Vice President, has previously dismissed government programmes that mask corruption behind political pageantry, describing the Gold-for-Oil scheme as a ‘grand distraction’ that enabled shady deals.
IMANI warns that repeated announcements of irregularities without naming actors weakens deterrence and undermines confidence in anti-corruption institutions.
The organisation insists that progress should not be measured by improvements in corruption perception rankings but by visible legal outcomes: arrests, prosecutions and convictions.
The challenge for President John Dramani Mahama, who has spoken boldly about resetting Ghana’s governance, is whether his administration will follow through. IMANI’s message is unambiguous: delay in enforcing accountability is complicity.