There are growing calls for the scrapping of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) for its inability so far to successfully prosecute just a single case.
It seems a very cogent decision to support those making such calls because the public thought the OSP was going to, at least, reduce corruption drastically in the country.
Such expectation was based on the fact that as established in 2018, the OSP was going to be “the gold standard and flagship specialised independent anti-corruption institution in Ghana, in pursuance of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.”
That expectation was strengthened the more because the OSP was given all the powers it needed to operate by pieces of legislation such as the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959); the Office of the Special Prosecutor Regulations, 2018 (L.I. 2373); and the Office of the Special Prosecutor (Operations) Regulations, 2018 (L.I. 2374), as well as other laws bearing on the suppression and repression of corruption.
That is to say that it has been given the necessary powers to prosecute all corruption cases without any let or hindrance.
Besides, it has been provided the office infrastructure and a budget, whereas its staff, including the Special Prosecutor, is paid from state coffers.
That means the public expect the OSP to deliver commensurate to all the state efforts, yet so far it appears not to show any results, hence the calls for its scrapping.
However, others think such calls are coming too early.
For instance, the Special Prosecutor, Mr Kissi Agyebeng, says such calls are ‘unwholesome’ as they can hinder the country’s fight against corruption.
According to him, an objective evaluation of the attempts to unfairly and unjustly discredit the OSP and its principal officers depended on whether a person and his associates were at the short end of an investigation carried out by the office.
He adds that for the OSP to effectively achieve its mandate, there is the need to nurture and entrench it to expand its powers.
Another advocate, the former Member of Parliament for Tamale Central and once upon the time the Chairman of Parliament’s Legal and Constitutional Committee, Inusah Fusieni, says the OSP has a unique mandate of fighting corruption and corruption-related offences.
He explains that the office is relatively new and learning from various cases tackled and that if it is allowed enough room to operate, it will be highly beneficial to the state.
We support the positions of the advocates for the need to maintain the OSP.
We also think that the OSP is nascent and so needs time and space to fix emerging problems and gain the necessary experience to operate.
The OSP is there for the interest of the state, not one political party or another.
It is there to fight the devil called corruption on behalf of the country.
Therefore any consideration for its scrapping will miss the big picture and thus turn out to be parochial.
After all, an observation by Mr Fuseini is instructive enough when he said “the fact that you can be sent to the Special Prosecutor’s office is enough deterrence, and the periodic information given to the public on the number of cases being handled by the Special Prosecutor also goes some way in dealing with the issue of corruption.”