The Chairman of Parliament’s Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, Ben Abdallah Banda, has described as unfair, suggestions that the Office of the Special Prosecutor has failed to live up to expectation a year after its establishment.
He argues that the mandate of the office and its operations require more time to be fruitful.
Speaking to Citi News, Ben Abdallah said the office will surely deliver the needed results but Ghanaians must be patient to allow that to happen.
“It will be a bit unfair to come to that conclusion. Let’s give the office of the Special Prosecutor a little bit of time, because what we are talking about may be controversial and sensitive cases,” he said.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor has been criticized by a section of the Ghanaian populace who say the office has not delivered on its mandate as it is expected.
The expectation of many has been that after a year, the Special Prosecutor should be seen to have prosecuted a number of cases but nothing of the sort has happened yet.
An anti-corruption campaigner, Vitus Azeem had suggested that the seemingly slow pace of work and lack of public confidence in the Office of the Special Prosecutor cannot be blamed on the Office but on the government.
He said the government after setting up the Office and nominating Martin Amidu as the head of the office has failed to provide adequate resources to help the office function effectively.
“The office has not been able to meet the expectations of the people. The impression that was created when Martin Amidu was appointed was we are going to see people go to jail and money being recovered. Unfortunately the NPP has less than 2 years before the next elections and we haven’t yet seen that. I don’t think we can blame the office or the people in the office for this delay,” he said in a Citi News interview.
“I think it is a bit of inadequate commitment on the part of the government because the law was passed in December 2017 and one would have expected that there will be budgetary allocation to the office in 2018 but there was nothing in the 2018 budget for him. It is only this year [2019] that there was allocation,” he added.