Inusah Fuseini Is Part of the Corruption Problem

Long before the Office of the Independent Special Prosecutor was established, there was the unearthing of the seismic scandal involving the drawing of double salaries by the Mahama cabinet appointees, including Messrs. Inusah Fuseini and Haruna Iddrisu, the National Democratic Congress’ Members of Parliament for Tamale-Central and Tamale-South constituencies, respectively. Mr. Iddrisu is also the Parliamentary Minority Leader, while Mr. Fuseini is the Ranking Member on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee. As I vividly recall, at least in the case of Mr. Iddrisu, the latter fiercely fought against the looming indictment and prosecution of the alleged criminal suspects, who were widely believed to have included himself and Mr. Fuseini, the latter of who publicly suggested that such patent act of thievery was, after all, not such a big deal.

So, it is rather absurd and scandalous for Mr. Fuseini to accuse President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of not being the least bit committed to the anti-corruption fight (See “I Never Said Amidu Was Paid – Inusah Fuseini” Modernghana.com 11/18/20). Indeed, the media widely had it that Mr. Iddrisu had desperately petitioned some prominent traditional rulers to intercede on behalf of these unconscionable double-salary drawing thieves. They would soon thumb their noses at the newly elected President Akufo-Addo and point to Ghana’s slight drop on the Corruption-Perception Index, produced by Transparency International, the globally renowned good-governance watchdog, as crystal clear evidence that Nana Akufo-Addo was “a clearing house for corruption.”

That is how grotesquely villainous the leaders of the National Democratic Congress are. I have also read a remarkable part of the Martin ABK Amidu response to counter allegations raised in the memorandum to the media written by Nana Bediatuo Asante, the Executive-Secretary to the President. Well, about all that I can say is that the former Independent Special Prosecutor ought to have been subjected to a comprehensive psychological and/or psychiatric examination. Other than such weird honorifics as “Former Retired Emeritus President Rawlings,” there is not much in the Amidu rejoinder that passes muster by way of logical content analysis. The writer keeps making erratic references to the “Mother Serpent of Corruption” without providing any forensically convincing evidence to back up his allegations and accusations.

Ultimately, the critically thinking reader comes away fully convinced that the former Independent Special Prosecutor had just capitalized on the occasion of his resignation to unleash a barrage of invectives at the man who had understandably mistaken the self-proclaimed Citizen Vigilante for a determined cross-partisan anti-corruption fighter. Mr. Amidu also makes “mystical” references to his Roman Catholic religious faith, to whose theology of the Holy Trinity he contemptuously links Nana Akufo-Addo and those of his relatives in government vis-à-vis the admittedly insufferably scandalous national contretemps that is the Agyapa Mineral Royalties Investment Deal. But then, the critical reader and thinker also begins to wonder whether Mr. Amidu had taken the job of Independent Special Prosecutor in hopes of hanging around and doing absolutely nothing until he could come up with an image-, reputation- and career-ruining evidence of wrongdoing against the former John Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.

As of this writing, the President had authorized the Finance Ministry to settle all salary arrears with Mr. Amidu and his deputy, whom Mr. Amidu claims have both not been paid for a couple of years. It is not clear to yours truly precisely how Mr. Amidu and his deputy paid for their bills and other expenses during the period in question. So, it doesn’t really matter whether Mr. Fuseini had inferred in a speech or a media discussion the fact of whether the former Independent Special Prosecutor had been paid or not been promptly paid while he served in his recently resigned capacity as the first Independent Special Prosecutor of Ghana’s Fourth Republic. What is assuredly clear here is that President Akufo-Addo has absolutely no choice but to prioritize the fight against official corruption, evenhandedly, in his second term in office. That may very well be his second most significant legacy after the unprecedentedly successful implementation of the Fee-Free Senior High School Policy Initiative.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

December 9, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]