The Evidence is Piling Up, so are the Audit Irregularities: The Recurring Audit Infractions of Ghana’s District Assemblies

Introduction
In accordance with Article 187(2) of the 1992 Constitution, Ghana’s Auditor-General submits an annual report to Parliament. Year after year, the report exposes financial irregularities running into hundreds of millions of cedis. Parliament debates it, headlines are written, officials are summoned, recommendations are made, and then the cycle repeats.

The pattern is now documented across a decade. A ten-year audit assessment found that Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembly (MMDA) irregularities accumulated to GH¢242.84 million and were still rising. The cumulative District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) figure for 2021-2025 now exceeds GH₵499 million, spanning cash irregularities, procurement breaches, payroll fraud, contract infractions and tax non-compliance. The most recent reports surface a particularly stark finding: MMDAs spent GH¢22.4 million paying revenue collectors who gathered only GH¢10.26 million in property rates, fees and tolls. Simultaneously, 48 assemblies failed to collect GH¢10.55 million legally due them from property rates, business permits and market rents. These are the institutions closest to ordinary Ghanaians and most directly responsible for basic services. Their fiscal dysfunction is the most consequential of all. The Auditor-General repeatedly recommends that District Coordinating Directors and District Finance Officers be held personally liable for violations. The same infractions persist the following year.

The Recommendations Nobody Implements
The problem is not information. It is recurrence. As procurement expert Anthony Abotsi-Afriyie noted in a formal letter to the Auditor-General, audit recommendations have historically been “reactive and remedial in nature seeking only to correct infractions that have already occurred”. They fix the symptom but rarely address the root cause. Several systemic factors explain why this cycle continues:

1. Weak internal controls.

Internal audit capacity at the local government level is critically constrained. Although the internal auditor reports functionally to the audit committee, they report administratively to the administrative head of the Assembly. Because the head of institution approves its budget, the internal auditor is usually vulnerable to administrative pressure. Internal auditors chronically lack authority. As former Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelovo noted: “We have set up an internal audit function in the public sector, but we have abused it. It has been so abused that you look at the internal auditor’s report and you virtually find nothing in there because of independence issues”.

2. Capacity deficits.

There is no baseline qualification requirement for officers performing key functions in many public institutions. As Appiah K. Adomako, Esq noted, recruitment in Ghana’s public sector is often shrouded in secrecy and favouritism often as rewards for political activists. Abotsi-Afriyie also argues that a significant proportion of infractions appear to arise from weak capacity and poor understanding of financial procedures rather than deliberate fraud, although the audit reports also document cases that warrant stronger investigations. Although the Local Government Service has a reasonable complement of key officers in various classes, they remain unevenly distributed across Ghana's 261 assemblies.

3. Incomplete digital integration.

The Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) and the Ghana Electronic Procurement System were designed to bring greater transparency and traceability to public expenditure and procurement. Yet, several MMDAs continue to operate outside this framework. In 2025, the Controller and Accountant-General issued a warning that it would freeze accounts of non-compliant assemblies, a welcome escalation that simultaneously signals how far full integration remains.

4. Weak enforcement.

Sections 96-98 of the Public Financial Management Act and Section 92 of the Public Procurement Act provide for sanctions against responsible officers. In practice, enforcement is inconsistent. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament conducts sittings to interrogate the reports, including zonal sittings that have called in officials from various parts of the country, but the gap between PAC recommendations and actual consequences remains wide. Ghana’s audit system is highly focused on generating findings rather than consequences.

Improvement without Institutionalisation

It would be unfair to suggest there has been no progress. There had been a steady decline of DACF audit infractions from 2020 to 2023. DACF irregularities declined from GH¢53.64 million in 2022 to GH¢49.65 million in 2023. The PAC’s zonal scrutiny sittings signal genuine parliamentary appetite for oversight. The creation of new high courts as announced by the President with the intent of prosecuting individuals cited in the AG’s report is a significant step in strengthening accountability. But 2024’s sharp reversal in DACF irregularities alone by over 300%, even steeper than the 109% increase recorded in total public-sector irregularities nationally is a reminder that progress in Ghana's public finances is fragile and easily reversed when political momentum flags and that this fragility is felt more acutely at the district level than the national aggregate suggests.

The assemblies are not failing because they are staffed by uniquely corrupt officials. They are failing because the system in which those officials operate rarely attaches meaningful consequences to misconduct. Behind every irregularity is an unfulfilled promise to a community. The CHPS compound never gets built, school children learn in a crumbling classroom, the waste collection system never arrives.

A Reform Agenda

1. Strengthen and empower the Internal Audit Unit. The Internal Audit Agency Act 2003 (Act 658) predates GIFMIS, GHANEPS and the Public Financial Management Act 2016. However, Act 658 has seen no reforms. It is operationally outdated. Reform should give the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) genuine supervisory authority, including the power to compel compliance and escalate persistent failures directly to Parliament and law enforcement bodies.
2. Professionalise recruitment. Legislation should set baseline qualification requirements for internal audit, procurement and finance roles are technical functions, not positions to fill by availability. Qualifications from the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, the Institute of Chartered Accountants or the Institute of Internal Auditors should anchor the standard as they provide internationally recognised qualifications. The Public Services Commission should require all MMDA vacancies to be publicly advertised on a centralized digital platform. The Office of the Head of Local Government Service (OHLGS) should establish a system to monitor and rationalize staff distribution across the various classes, ensuring equitable deployment and preventing staff overload in some parts of the country while addressing shortages in others.
3. Embed automated compliance into GIFMIS. Rather than relying solely on post-hoc audits, the Controller and Accountant General’s Department should embed automated compliance triggers into GIFMIS: alerts flagging unusual expenditure patterns, blocks on transactions exceeding procurement thresholds and real-time reconciliation between assembly accounts and Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) tax records. IMANI Africa has recommended an Application Programming Interface (API) link between GIFMIS, GRA and commercial banks to verify tax remittances instantaneously rather than discovering shortfalls months later. This can be adapted by the MMDAs.
4. Activate and publicize sanctions. More than GH₵15.6 billion of the GH₵18.4 billion in irregularities recorded across public boards and statutory institutions in 2024 were classified as recoverable. This must be pursued aggressively and paired with personal, not merely institutional, consequences. Administrative sanctions, criminal referrals where warranted, and presidential follow-through on the announced high courts for Auditor-General-cited cases are all necessary to break the deterrence deficit.
5. Institute and publish an annual audit implementation tracker. The Audit Service or Internal Audit Agency should publish a public tracker showing which recommendations have been fully implemented, partially implemented or ignored by each MMDA, with the duration each outstanding finding has remained unaddressed. Public visibility shifts accountability from an internal, invisible process to one subject to citizen scrutiny.

What Works Elsewhere
Recurring audit infractions are not unique to Ghana. Other countries have reduced similar weaknesses by combining clear performance targets, digital controls, public transparency, and consequences for non-compliance.

Rwanda’s Imihigo system links public-sector performance to annually agreed and measurable targets. Performance contracts are assessed and results are published, creating stronger incentives for officials to deliver on commitments and address implementation gaps. Ghana could adapt this model by requiring MMDAs to include audit-resolution targets in annual performance agreements, with progress independently monitored and publicly reported (Rwanda’s Imihigo performance reports).

South Africa also demonstrates the value of structured audit follow-up. Its Auditor-General publicly reports municipal audit outcomes, while stronger-performing municipalities use management reviews, internal audit units, and monitored audit-action plans to prevent findings from recurring (South Africa’s municipal audit outcomes).

Kenya’s Public Procurement Information Portal provides another useful lesson. By publishing procurement notices and contract information, digital systems can improve traceability and make irregular transactions easier to detect. Kenya’s Public Procurement Information Portal

Beyond Africa, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, showed how citizen involvement can strengthen oversight of local spending and align public investments with community priorities. World Bank study on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre

For Ghana, the lesson is clear: audit compliance should not end with identifying infractions. It should be embedded in performance management, digital financial controls, public disclosure, and enforceable corrective action.

By:
Emmanuel Aboagye Odoom, Accountability Technical Advisor

Gloria Opoku-Gyan, Administrator