Kofi Bentil, an attorney and the Senior Vice President of Imani Africa, has advocated for the modification of the country’s constitution as a means of putting an end to corruption in the country.
According to him, the widespread corruption in Ghana can be traced back to the flexibility of the 1992 Constitution. As a result, it does not matter who is elected president since that person is unable to make any changes.
“The problem stems from our system of government and the mechanisms that it entails, which ultimately go back to the Constitution.”
“Because these governance systems and structures are flawed, they manifest themselves in massive corruption, which causes people to give up, and then it also manifests in economic problems like what we are having now, which leads to DDE.” “These governance systems and structures are the cause of DDE.”
“You can bring people, make President Obama the president of Ghana, and he would still have issues,” he said. “You can bring people; make President Obama the president of Ghana.”
In an interview on JoyNews’s Newsfile program on Saturday, Mr. Bentil said that the problem will keep happening as long as the Constitution’s flaws aren’t fixed, since Ghanaians don’t have good leaders.
“So what we need to do now is move from an open constitution to a tight constitution that does not give them room at all, because I am not sure whether the problem is NPP and NDC or whether there is going to be a party… “We need to move from an open constitution to a tight constitution that does not give them any room at all. ”
“We cannot have faith that our leaders will make the correct decisions for us,” he stated.
Mr. Kofi Bentil continued by saying that even if the Constitution is not the primary source of the issue, Ghana would benefit greatly from having it amended.
“Yes, our leaders are seriously failing us,” he continued, “but the main thing that needs to be done is to put structures around them, beginning with a constitutional amendment, so that these things that consistently recur regardless of which government, we will at least be able to put a handle on them and possibly redirect them in the right direction.”
The Senior Vice President of Imani Africa says that the level of corruption in Ghana has led many people to think that military coups are a better option.
“And when these things happen and continue to happen, that is how you have the coups, because certain people perceive that the Constitution does not work,” she continued. “Constitutions are effective; but, what we need to ensure is that our leaders cultivate a particular level of enthusiasm,” he lamented.
It should be remembered that a report on the status of corruption in Ghana was published on Tuesday, January 31, and said that the country had been given a ranking of 72 on the 2022 edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
Ghana received a score of 43 out of a possible 100 points, according to the findings that Transparency International (TI) made public.
This indicates that Ghana has not made any headway toward improving its CPI score of 43 over the course of the last three years.
The CPI Score is based on people’s assessments of the level of corruption and can vary anywhere from 100 (very clean) to 0 (completely corrupt) (highly corrupt).