Governance system lacks transparency — Report

Ghana’s governance system lacks transparency, a research report on open governance in Ghana conducted by Integrity Initiative (GII) has disclosed.

The survey, which examined Ghana’s legal frameworks and how they conformed to open governance standards, as well as how the laws are enforced, showed that 81 per cent of the respondents indicated that the laws did not meet open governance benchmarks in terms of transparency.

Seventy- five per cent of the respondents indicated that in practice, such laws were also not transparent. 

In the survey in which the respondents scrutinised laws, including the Public Procurement Act, Financial Administration Act, Audit Service Act, the Public Office Holders (declaration of assets and disqualification) Act, the results showed that only 6.8 per cent of the country’s laws were transparent with 14 per cent showing a level of transparency in enforcement.

At a workshop to validate the open governance scorecard assessment, the acting Programmes Manager of GII, Mr Linus Awelana-Addah, observed that the major challenge of transparency in Ghana was because of the absence of a freedom of information law.

Open governance

According to Transparency International, open governance is the concept that citizens have rights to access to information and participation, governments have in place the institutions and policies to advance the promotion of transparency, accountability and participation, and the appropriate tools and investments are in place to enable these policies.

Through open governance, citizens are assured of an enabling environment for participation and citizen participation in public policies and processes which means citizens can hold their authorities to account and denounce instances of malfeasance and sanction elected officials – all key to fighting corruption

Participation, oversight and control 

On participation, the study showed a relatively better participation of ordinary people at the district assembly level but lack of participation at the national level. 

The report indicated that while 12.5 per cent of the country’s laws promoted participation, in practice, the scores were better as 29 per cent of the respondents stated the laws met open governance participation standards.

Mr Awelana-Addah said in spite of the country’s robust laws, what affected control and oversight was conflict of interest.

Making reference to the Whistle Blowers Act, he said although the law existed, the fear of victimisation kept potential whistle blowers quiet. 

He also expressed concern about the lack of regulation on lobbying and conflict of interest, a situation he said made governance systems opaque. 

According to him, in all democracies, lobbying was allowed but it had to be transparent and those pulling the strings were known.

Ghana’s asset declaration law is not transparent.

The Executive Director of GII, Vitus Adaboo Azeem, said in its present state, Ghana’s asset declaration law “does not make  an effective tool to fight corruption”.

According to him, the ideal situation should be that the Auditor-General could open the envelope and verify if the assets mentioned did exist or “if it was just a blank sheet that has been put into an envelope.”

According to research, there are different forms of asset declaration across the world — those in which office holders make full public disclosure of their assets, those in which assets disclosed by public office holders are verified and those in which the assets declared are kept away from public scrutiny.

In Nigeria, the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) verifies the personal assets of governors of states of the federation and serving ministers. 

Tanzania has a similar asset declaration regime where a committee verifies all assets declared by public officers.