Office of the Special Prosecutor must be scrapped, nothing will come out of it – Asiedu Nketiah

According to Asiedu Nketiah, the OSP, as he predicted, has proven to be ineffective in the fight against corruption in the country.

He suggested that the OSP should be scrapped and its resources used to separate the Office of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice because an independent Attorney General is key to fighting corruption and not a Special Prosecutor.

“If the Constitution is not amended for new laws, the Special Prosecutor will remain ineffective in prosecuting people. All of the expenditure on the OSP has no benefit. We should cancel it and focus on splitting the Attorney General’s Office from the Ministry of Justice,” he said in the Twi dialect.

The NDC chairman explained that the OSP has not been effective because of the laws establishing it.

He said that the current law does not give the OSP the real power to go after people who engage in acts of corruption.

He added that the investigation the OSP has opened against former Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta, like the many in the past, would amount to nothing.

“From the day the Office of the Special Prosecutor was created, I have always held the position that the work of the Special Prosecutor would go nowhere because of the laws establishing the office. I said that he (the Special Prosecutor) would not be able to prosecute any person, and to date, no person has been prosecuted… He declared Ofori-Atta wanted, but it has not amounted to anything.

“If we want someone who would fight corruption ruthlessly, it should be someone who can bite. It should not be someone who would be making all the noise, and at the end of the day, nothing happens. I’m still not confident that he is going to achieve any results.”

Background:

On Wednesday, February 12, 2025, the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), while updating the public on its ongoing investigations at a press conference in Accra, declared Ken Ofori-Atta wanted.

The Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, declared Ofori-Atta a fugitive wanted for corruption and corruption-related offences in a number of cases his office was investigating, including the renegotiation contract between ECG and Beijing Jao, procurement over the National Cathedral, contracts awarded by the Health Ministry to Service Ghana Auto Limited/Ambulances, and the SML-GRA deal.

He accused the former minister of orchestrating a recently reported raid on his residence by alleged military personnel to discredit the OSP.

The raid and the wanted notice against Ofori-Atta were heavily debated in Ghana’s Parliament.

Members of the Minority Caucus slammed the use of the military to raid Ofori-Atta’s home, while their colleagues in the Majority Caucus argued that the previous NPP government did worse.

The leader of the Majority Caucus, Mahama Ayariga, confirmed that the raid did happen and subsequently apologised to Ofori-Atta and the public over the raid.

The OSP subsequently removed the former minister from its list of persons declared fugitives and wanted for various offences.

It explained that its decision to remove him from the list was after it received an indication of when he (Ofori-Atta) would be returning to the country.

Watch Asiedu Nketiah’s remarks in the video below: