Legal practitioner and former parliamentary candidate aspirant of the NDC for Nabdam Constituency, Lamtiig Apanga has described the creation of the Office of Special Prosecutor as unnecessary and a duplication of functions.
Speaking in an interview on Tuesday on State of Our Nation, Mr. Lamtiig argued that the country had enough structures and institutions to tackle corruption and did not need an entire setup to perform same function.
He said all what the state needed to do was to resource the existing agencies who already had the expertise and give them the freewill to tackle the canker.
“That office is the most unnecessary office to be created. It is a duplication of resources. We need not create that office. We have the Ghana Police Service with the CIDs, we have the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), we have the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), we have BNI, and then we have several other investigative bodies,” he stated.
Creating an entirely new agency, he argued, is a waste of resources and duplication of functions.
“The staff at the OSP, the investigator are police investigators, so they are not good to be at the police unit, how good will they be when they come to your unit? What’s the difference? Why can’t you train them and I’m telling you as matter of fact, as a lawyer, that at the police CID unit, they have several units that undertake several investigations,” he stated.
“Why can’t you train policemen, give them resources, put in supervision mechanism to ensure that they do their work and give them the freehand to do their work without influences”.
The legal practitioner stated that although many including his party members and the international community embraced the idea of setting up the OSP, it was just a cosmetic exercise by the Akufo-Addo government to be seen as being serious about curbing the rot.
In 2017, Parliament passed the bill establishing the OSP, setting stage for what was believed to be a major move to tackle graft in the country.
President Akufo-Addo, subsequently in February 2018, appointed citizen vigilante, Martin Amidu as its head
Mr. Amidu was supposed to served a 7-year term but resigned barely 3 years in office, citing interference in his work and lack of resources as reason for his resignation.
The president, subsequently, appointed Kissi Agyebeng in 2021 as Mr. Amidu’s successor.
But close to 6 years since the creation of the office, it has been able to only complete investigations into 7 cases with four of them being prosecuted even though it said it is probing over 150 cases of corruption and corruption related matters.
