Senior Presidential Advisor Yaw Osafo-Maafo has made a strong case for greater openness in the asset declarations by public officials in Ghana.
He highlighted the critical need for enhanced accountability within Ghana’s governance framework pointing out that the existing procedures, which mandate public officials to declare their assets to the Auditor General, lack the necessary transparency, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the accountability measures.
In Ghana, when you become a minister of state, at all levels, public sector at certain levels, the first thing you do is to declare your assets and file same with the Auditor General. What I personally don’t like about this law is that after you’ve declared the assets, everything is kept confidential between the Auditor General and yourself and therefore, it becomes very difficult for anybody to challenge the authenticity of your declaration.” He
Mr. Osafo-Maafo also expressed his dissatisfaction with the current state of the law, advocating for the removal of the confidentiality provision to allow for public access to these declarations.
Speaking at a stakeholder engagement of the Open Government Partnership in Accra he expressed belief that this change would significantly increase public trust in government officials.
He shared insights from his experiences during the drafting of the constitution, where proposals for public disclosure of assets met strong resistance from traditional leaders.
“I happened to be in the Consultative Assembly when we were drawing up the Constitution of the Republic, when we put in this phrase and I was championing the publication of the assets and of course, the chiefs were there in their riot numbers. The chiefs were so furious with me because they said, look, they want to go to kill us when they know what we have.”
Source: Anthony Sasu Ayisadu/ATLMFNEWS
