Ghanafuor, Is Accountability for NPP Appointees a Political Football?

Ghanafuor, one may stand with the underdog and still insist that justice must not become a shield for impunity. It is understandable that people recoil when state security organisations arrest “suspects” and leave them for hours unable to communicate with those who care for them. The state’s power to detain carries a corresponding duty to respect the dignity and rights of the detained.

But concern for those rights cannot become an alibi for officials suspected of serious procurement fraud, grand larceny or self-enrichment schemes that may have caused financial loss to the Republic. Allegations are not proof, and arrest is not conviction. That is precisely why the facts must be established through lawful investigation, the examination of evidence and the questioning of suspects. Justice requires both restraint in the exercise of state power and accountability when public power is abused.

The arrest by EOCO of suspects who served in the previous NPP administration must not be turned into a political football. To mobilise party supporters against an investigation because it reaches former appointees is to imply that accountability belongs to “little people”, while those who occupy the commanding heights of politics may claim exemption. That is not a defence of justice. It is privilege dressed in the language of outrage.

Recent demonstrations in France, Spain and India should give criticism-averse politicians pause. The BBC reported on 2 October that school protests in France had spread beyond the Paris region, with more than 560 schools disrupted amid grievances including teacher shortages, class sizes and working conditions. In Spain, housing protests followed the eviction of an 87-year-old woman; The Local reported on 3 October that further demonstrations were due in Madrid and other cities after parliament rejected proposed tenant protections.

India adds a distinct but related signal. Al Jazeera reported on 2 October that supporters of the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party protested in Mumbai and New Delhi, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over voter-roll revisions they say threaten electoral fairness. That allegation is contested, but the demonstrations show how intensely younger citizens can respond when they believe the integrity of public institutions is at stake.

These are different struggles, not one international movement. Their shared warning is that public trust erodes when institutions seem distant from people’s daily needs, or insulated from scrutiny. Ghana’s politicians should hear that warning before anger becomes the only language they recognise.

Accountability must not stop at punishing wrongdoing. It must help restore public resources to public purpose. If wrongdoing is established and money recovered, those resources belong to the Republic and should serve the people whose trust was betrayed.

That demands more than slogans. It requires first-principles thinking about how policy can give families practical routes to security, productive work and a stake in the country’s future. Imagine planned climate-smart communities where every Ghanaian family that chooses to participate can access a family home and land for a profitable green start-up. Link secure housing with community enterprise, environmental stewardship and local decision-making, and the result could be a model for creating livelihoods while protecting the land. Designed well and made available at scale, such initiatives could help lift tens of millions out of poverty. That is an ambition, not an automatic outcome; it would take sound policy, transparent financing and genuine community consent.

The NPP promised to grow our GDP and transform Ghana into a prosperous society that had advanced beyond the need for aid. Yet the country endured a scale of looting that bankrupted the national economy. Against that history, investigating suspected theft of taxpayers’ money is not persecution by definition. It is the minimum obligation of a state that claims to govern by law.

Massing at EOCO’s office because party members are assisting investigators to establish the facts is shameful and intolerable from those who profess belief in the rule of law. If the suspects are innocent, evidence and due process are their proper defence. If wrongdoing is proved, political allegiance cannot be a pardon.

No one is above the law. Accountability applies to all where public funds are concerned. Full stop. Haaba.