Corruption under a microscope, a Ghana perspective

Abstract

Corruption is a global issue and a challenge in Ghana, however in the last few years, it has taken over aspects of the Ghanaian society, from government, public and private sectors, and creating a negative impact on all governance arrangement and performance in Ghana. The prevalence of corruption points to a humongous dishonesty in the Ghanaian society. Some causes of corruption in Ghana are political monetization, low level of literacy, non-enforcement of relevant laws, bureaucracy, and fusing of duties among the arms of governance. Corruption retards economic development and growth, moral degeneration, reduces confidence in government Institutions, Product and poor execution of government projects and contracts. “Perceived” corruption by religious leaders has adversely affected people’s faith in God. Progressively, successive governments have tried to tackle corruption by the introduction of legislation; attempted selective prosecution of persons culpable of corruption; digitizing services, to reduce the interface of humans in service delivery mechanism, but all these have had limited success due to political interferences and selectivity of application. The watchful eyes of Civil and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and world bodies such as the World Bank, United Nations, and Transparency International have all helped in minimizing the impact of corruption to various degrees. The decision to fight corruption is an exceptional one justified by exceptional circumstances. Ghanaians need to make disciplined efforts to produce fundamental decisions that shape and guide how and what they do to fight corruption. Reports from government, NGOs and international bodies were searched and selected according to their relevance to the subject under study and analysed to write this paper. The objective of this paper is therefore to make an exhaustive analysis of corruption in Ghana.