Increased Corruption under Prez. Mahama or Increased Corruption Disclosure under Him? An Analytical Review of the “Paradigm of Exposure” Thesis.

And so it came to pass that some people are wailing that corruption, including unintelligent ones have become widespread in Ghana today than ever. Ghana was once honored by one of the widely circulated and read magazines in Africa as the “Republic of Corruption”. Not too long ago, significant majority of respondents in a survey were up in arms against the Presidency for not just being corrupt but the 2nd most corrupt institution in Ghana .

Contrary to expectation (that Governments will deny all the bad stuffs), this Government and especially the President himself, H.E. JDM have admitted umpteen times that incidence of corruption reports has phenomenally increased by a lot. However, what the Government and President Mahama reject is the taking of the ever increased reporting of corruption cases for a generalised conclusion that, this Government is the most corrupt ever in the recordation of Ghana's history.

President Mahama and spokespersons of the Government have severally contended that the case is NOT that corruption has increased in Ghana, rather it is the REPORTING of corruption that has increased. Stated differently, President Mahama is running the most transparent Government ever and this accounts for his Government's determined position to sunshine corruption cases and bring them to light so we could all as a people deal with the problem. The eloquent Deputy Minister of Information, Mr. Felix Kwakye Ofosu has condensed the Government's position on corruption into an interesting thesis – the “'PARADIGM OF EXPOSURE” (POE) .

The POE thesis generally reflects in Government communicators' arguments as follows: Unlike as pertained in previous Governments where corruption was covered, President Mahama's government is 'sun-shining' corruption. The Government is bringing them to light so we could deal with them. It is therefore rather unfortunate for people to turn around and yoke the Government as the most corrupt ever, with its own determination to fully and faithfully disclose and be transparent with corruption.

Is the Government's reasoning fulsome in strength or deeper analysis is required to understand corruption in Ghana today? The devil they say is in the details and analysis does not hurt anybody. So here we go. However, before we go into the details, let us dispose two ancillary issues which come with the POE thesis.

First, virtually all the disclosed corruption cases are inter alia fraudulent, thievery and fleecing acts committed under and by people in this or close to this NDC government. Second, all else being equal, ''previous gov'ts” as used here could only mean one previous gov't, especially under the 4th republic, which is the NPP Gov't under President Kufuor (2001-2009). This deduction I do here cannot be invalid because it would be an incongruent expectation for anybody to imagine that this NDC Gov't will ever accuse the late President Mills (may his peaceable and intellectual soul rest in peace) or former President Rawlings gov't for hiding corruption. (The usual culprit is the opposition and vice versa).

Now to the substantive issues. First, to say that the previous NPP government was hiding corruption cases unlike that of President Mahama leads to one logical conclusion: That, the current NDC government knows of or has records of corruption cases, committed and covered between 2001-2009 under President Kufuor. The threshold question then becomes: Why would President Mahama's Government elect to SELECTIVELY disclose cases of corruption to the inclusion of ONLY those committed under and by people in this or close to this NDC government? Why at all would President Mahama bypass corruption records of say Akufo Addo, which were covered by the then Kufuor's govt and be disclosing cases of corruption that are committed by NDC functionaries for the NPP to turn around and use them to tarnish his government's image? Does this make common sense to you?

Second, the claim that it is the Government that is doing the disclosure is not entirely accurate. Save the exceptional case of the National Service Secretariat scandal which we are told it was President Mahama who ordered for the BNI-investigation (which is commendable on his part), the egregious corruption cases that have become public today had actually in some cases been investigated and the reports covered by the Gov't. Never would we have heard anything about them but for journalists like Manasseh Azure Awuni. A case in point is the GYEEDA Scandal.

The claim that this Government is suffering an unfortunate unintended impression that corruption is more pervasive now than before would at best qualify for just a hollow argument even on the less rigorous scale of common sense. And so if we are now hearing and seeing more cases of corruption, it cannot be because they are being DISCLOSED but because they are INCREASINGLY HAPPENING IN FACT and on daily basis and on a scale as WIDE AS BEING REPORTED.

So, having thoroughly dismiss the claim that it is the increased reporting of corruption that is creating an impression of pervasiveness of corruption, does the question: Is President Mahama running the most corrupt government in the history of Ghana remain a Section B Question?

Methinks, we now have a quite sufficient analytical framework to be able to answer the above question with either YES or NO. There is no need for grammar or book long bl3 (English). Not even IEA research.

Festival Godwin Boateng

1. There is a huge controversy on whether the IEA study is methodologically strong enough to validly arrive at such a conclusion. However, this article will not wade into that.

2. Corruption Rating: Gov't Is Doing Something Right – Felix Kwakye Ofosu: http://elections.peacefmonline.com/pages/politics/201412/224727.php

3. In Ghana, Section B Questions always need to be answered with a lot of words. They are unlike the multiple choice (Section A) questions