Former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Sam Okudzeto, has launched a scathing attack on the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), declaring that the institution has completely failed to justify its existence and should be scrapped without delay.
Mr Okudzeto made the remarks on JoyNews’ PM Express on Sunday, December 8, where he questioned the very rationale behind the creation of the OSP.
“Why was the institution set up? Has it achieved its purpose?” he asked, answering his own question bluntly: “I don’t think so.”
The veteran lawyer argued that corruption remains rampant and brazen across public institutions, proving that the OSP has made no meaningful impact.
“Corruption is still on. I see it every day. Everywhere you turn in every institution, you see it openly. They are not even afraid. People are no longer even afraid. You go there, and they demand money from you to do this for you, when you already paid,” he said.
When pressed by host Evans Mensah on whether the OSP should be abolished, Mr Okudzeto was unequivocal.
“Yeah, I’m saying that that institution is not achieving its purpose,” he stated, insisting that Ghana already has sufficient structures to fight corruption through the Attorney General’s Department and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
“There is a Director of Public Prosecutions; that is his job – to prosecute criminal offences, which include corruption and corruption-related offences. There is nothing which makes corruption any more different than any other crime. Why do you create another institution to do the same job?” he questioned.
Mr Okudzeto dismissed the argument that the OSP was needed as a specialised anti-corruption body, saying Ghana got the model fundamentally wrong.
“In other places where you have a special prosecutor, it means there is a specific problem that has arisen, and you want that person to go there and solve that problem. You don’t create a whole institution for it, as we have done,” he explained.
He challenged anyone to point to another country with a permanent institutionalised Office of the Special Prosecutor modelled exactly like Ghana’s.
The former GBA President instead advocated strengthening the Attorney General’s Department and the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, citing historical examples of distinguished Ghanaian jurists such as former Speaker of Parliament Justice D. F. Annan and even the United Kingdom’s former Director of Public Prosecutions who later became Prime Minister.
Mr Okudzeto suggested the OSP was created more as a political gesture than a practical solution, warning that building an entire institution around one individual is “dangerous.”
“I suspect somebody thought corruption was too rampant, and therefore creating an institution was a good idea. Then you appoint an individual and try to create an institution around that individual. What is the background of that individual? When you don’t train people to do a job, you think creating institutions, particularly around just an individual, is dangerous… very, very dangerous,” he cautioned.
He concluded that Ghana should abandon the OSP experiment and focus resources on reinforcing existing prosecutorial structures within the Attorney General’s Department to effectively combat corruption.