The co-founder and Executive Director of Afrobarometer, Prof. Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi has questioned President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s commitment to fighting corruption, following the forced retirement of immediate-past Auditor General, Daniel Yao Domelevo.
Mr. Gyimah-Boadi said the recent development involving Mr. Domelevo only exposes the President’s lack of credibility in fighting corruption.
“As for the President’s credibility in terms of anti-corruption, I am afraid to say it is in tatters. It has been in tatters for a while but this puts a nail in the coffin. I see Domelevo as a victim of well-orchestrated actions by individuals who are [government] officials and by state institutions,” he said.
On March 2, a day before Mr. Domelevo was scheduled to return from his controversial forced leave, the Audit Service Board questioned his nationality and age.
The Board claimed Mr. Domelevo should have retired in 2020 and is Togolese.
The Presidency endorsed the retirement claims of the Audit Service Board and said it considered Mr. Domelevo retired.
Mr. Gyimah-Boadi could not fathom why Domelevo had to suffer such a fate, having demonstrated a keen commitment to ending corruption.
“Mr. Domelevo was exercising proper constitutional and legal oversight and officials and institutions that Mr. Domelevo has sought to hold to account. The man was doing his best to protect the public purse to claim surcharges for improperly spent public funds. One who is trying to fight corruption is one who is being persecuted and hounded out of office,” he said in a soon-to-be-aired interview on The Point of View on Citi TV.
He believes Mr. Domelevo was forced out of office because Ghana has a “presidency that is increasingly looking like it has difficulty working with [heads of] institutions that it has not appointed.”
Apart from Mr. Gyimah-Boadi, the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Against Corruption has taken on President Akufo-Addo over Domelevo’s forced retirement.
The CSOs say the action is an affront to good governance and the fight against corruption.
