Co-founder and Executive Director of Afrobarometer, Professor Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, has said the removal of the Auditor General, Daniel Yao Domelevo from office, is the handy work of a network of persons in government.
Speaking in an interview, he questioned President Akufo-Addo’s commitment to fighting corruption, following the forced retirement of Mr Domelevo.
“The President’s credibility in terms of anti-corruption, I am afraid to say is in tatters. It has been in tatters for a while but this puts a nail in the coffin. I see Domelevo as a victim of well-orchestrated actions by individuals who are [government] officials and in state institutions,” he said.
On March 2, a day before Mr Domelevo was scheduled to return from his controversial forced leave, the Audit Service Board questioned his nationality and age.
The Board claimed Mr Domelevo should have retired in 2020 and that he is a Togolese. The Presidency endorsed the retirement claims of the Audit Service Board and said it considered Mr Domelevo retired.
Professor Gyimah-Boadi could not fathom why Domelevo had to suffer such a fate, having demonstrated a keen commitment to ending corruption.
“Mr Domelevo was exercising proper constitutional and legal oversight on officials and institutions that he sought to hold accountable. The man was doing his best to protect the public purse and surcharging for improperly spent public funds. One who is trying to fight corruption is the one being persecuted and hounded out of office,” he said in a soon-to-be-aired interview.
Professor Gyimah-Boadi believes the Mr Domelevo was forced out of office because Ghana has a “presidency that is increasingly looking like it has difficulty working with [heads of] institutions that it has not appointed.”
Aside Professor Gyimah-Boadi, the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Against Corruption has also taken on President Akufo-Addo over Domelevo’s forced retirement.
The CSOs say the action is an affront to good governance and the fight against corruption.
