Corruption's New Frequency  

The toxin of corruption no longer has limits. It pours as monsoon rain from the sky and affects all strata of public life, sweeping across state agencies with an almost unstoppable ferocity. The public sector as the frontier of the immorality is so infected that activities are rarely accomplished without the cankerworm playing a catalytic role.

Ghanaians appear to have thrown their hands into the air in despair and frustration as the social Ebola takes on a garb of invincibility, even if President Mahama assures them that he is working to reverse the trend.

Interestingly and hypocritically, political office holders at the helm – key beneficiaries of the cankerworm – love to express their readiness at the many public forums they find themselves addressing. Berating the social disease, they cut the picture of priests on the podium but no, the image is not real.

Interestingly and instructively, a few state agencies have managed to elude the civil society radar on the contagion. The National Communications Authority (NCA) is coming strongly against agencies which have unenviable records on the corruption league table in an undeclared race.

Only those seeking licences to run private radio stations have first-hand information about how the agency is rubbing shoulders with the most corrupt state departments and even outdoing some of them.

Those charged with monitoring the spread of the contagion should begin spreading their reach so that new entrants yet outstanding in terms of the prevailing volume of corruption such as the NCA, can be covered. Oh yes!

Were the award of the Order of The Vulture for infamy to be instituted by civil society organisations monitoring the scale of corruption and rankings thereof, the agency charged with allocating frequencies for radio stations would give older agencies a run for their money.

The NCA, relatively new in the public sector, has earned so much notoriety in the corruption league that it was mentioned by a high-ranking Ghanaian clergyman during a public discourse recently. Perhaps the agency might consider engaging a renowned PR management consultancy to work towards reversing the smelling image it has unwittingly cut for itself.

That the anomaly has remained concealed from the public eye is because those who manage to pay to get through would rather the status quo is maintained than make a public fuss and be denied the chance of a renewal in future.

Frequency owners who decide to be loud about the anomalous features and demand changes to the status quo stand the risk of occasional interruptions of their transmissions.

When it is time to renew their licences they should be ready to answer trumped-up queries about operating in breach of their terms. That is the game, the ambiguity of the charges notwithstanding. Grease palms adequately or play ball – as the deal is known in the underworld of bribery and corruption – and scale through or alternatively question the status quo and suffer the consequence of a flat denial period.