Independent body needed to investigate complaints against police

Nana Kwasi Agyepong, the Business Development Manager of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), on Thursday suggested that independent bodies should investigate complaints against police personnel.

He said it was hardly possible for anything good to come out of complaints of extortion against a police officer lodged with a superior officer who could be a beneficiary of monies so extorted.

Nana Agyepong was speaking at a two-day workshop organized by the GII on “Zero Tolerance against Corruption Campaign: the Role of Religious Bodies in Ghana,” in Ho.

He said in some countries, complaints bureaux for settlement of grievances against the police and other government institutions were largely independent of the administrative machinery of those institutions.

Religious leaders and traditional authorities are attending the workshop organized by the GII, National Catholic Secretariat, Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission and the Christian Council of Ghana.

Nana Agyepong said corruption, whether petty or grand, was rampant in Ghana and must be fought.

He said the GII, the Ghanaian chapter of Transparency International (TI), decided to rope in religious bodies as key collaborators because they appeared well placed to help prosecute its anti-corruption agenda.

Nana Agyepong said religious groups and their leaders were very influential, highly respected and listened to by the majority of Ghanaians and appeared well placed to carry out the anti-corruption agenda.

During an open forum, however, religious bodies came under fire for doing very little to curb corruption.

Rev. Seth Mawutor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Ho slammed the church for only preaching and not producing good disciples who would go into politics and public service as bastions of sanctity.

“Preaching is different, we have failed in discipleship training so that many of the corrupt are Christians,” he said.

Mr Victor Kwawukume, a journalist, expressed worry that good Ghanaian values of truthfulness, modesty, transparency were being supplanted by immodesty and greed.

Right Reverend Francis Amenu, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, said the Church must fight corruption from within itself to gain the people's confidence in its fight against corruption at the national level.

GNA