Corruption fight: Agyeman-Manu should not be in office – Manasseh

Ghana has been ranked 73 on CPI

He said the Health Minister shouldn’t be in office if Ghana is serious

Manasseh Azure Awuni, has stated that, if Ghana was serious in fighting corruption, the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, should have been asked to vacate his position following the Sputnik V vaccine scandal.

According to him, the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led administration, has over the years reduced the fight against corruption to a joke, which has actually affected Ghana’s performance on the Corruption Perception Index.

The investigative journalist’s remarks were on the back of Ghana’s stagnated performance on the Corruption Perception Index, where Ghana managed to rake 43 points out of 100, just like it did the previous year.

Transparency International report indicated that, “Ghana [has] failed to make progress in the fight against corruption in the year 2021 as the score of 43 is the same as the country’s 2020 score.”

Ghana ranked 73 out of 180 countries/territories on the Index and 9th in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express programme on Tuesday, Azure Awuni explained that the evidence against the Health Minister, during the parliamentary probe was damning enough to call for his resignation, but President Akufo-Addo took no action as he had promised he would on several platforms, instead, he made jokes about it in Agyeman-Manu’s constituency.

“We know how the President goes about bragging that no member of his government has ever been investigated and found culpable, if anybody has evidence they should bring it forward. But we all know that the country’s Health Minister should not be in office if we were in any serious country or we had any leader who was serious about the fight against corruption,” he said.

“He appeared before parliament, admitted breaching the procurement act, not following what the Attorney General said about the vaccine contract and all of that. That vaccine was being sold $10 a dose but we were paying almost twice the dose through a very shady intermediary in the United Arab Emirates. These same people that the NPP while in the administration had calls to criticize and call fraud and all manner of names because they were involved in the Ameri deal.

“So, every Ghanaian was expecting the President to at least ask Kwaku Agyeman Manu to step aside. But what did he do? He went to the MP’s or Minister’s constituency and was joking about it. So, if corruption has been reduced to a joke then the whole nation is joking about this fight,” Manasseh Azure Awuni stressed.