President of Anti-Corruption Institute (ACI), Lawyer Dr. Nana Oppong, has said that laws of Ghana are enabling corruption in the system rather than control it.
According to him, the various anti-corruption laws are rather creating opportunities, discretions and the justifications that enable people in authority to take what belong to the society illegally.
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“When you say there are laws to fight corruption, it’s like taking a portion of existing disease to solve the entire disease, it doesn’t work. We need to sit down and ask ourselves, how to prevent people from having the authority and the discretion to abuse the positions,” he stated.
Lawyer Nana Oppong made these remarks when he appeared on the maiden edition of “The News on GhanaNews TV” – a program that discusses topical issues of national concern. The show is broadcasts twice a week on GhanaNews TV and the maiden edition was titled “Analyzing the Corruption Situation in Ghana”.
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Nana Oppong, a Supreme Court lawyer who is also the President of the Distinguished Scholars of Africa (DistinSA), said most acts of corruptions are legal, hence the posture of our laws in criminalizing actions with the motive of solving the problem of corruption is never going to work.
Lawyer Oppong said though he believes in the law as a tool in fighting corruption, existing laws which are supposed to fight corruption have failed completely, hence the need for new systems and procedures to fight the canker.
“It is time for us to stop pretending that the laws that we have now can help us win the fight against corruption and start putting appropriate measures in place,” he stated.
He said setting up institutions to prosecute corruption is never the way forward in weeding out the canker, adding that corruption is currently “not at the camera level but rather the pen level.”
By Julius Kwabena Adofo
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