Former Member of Parliament for Ejisu, Kwabena Owusu Aduomi could be summoned by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to answer questions on some bribery comments.

This is because a group called the Ghana Watch Alliance (GWA) has petitioned the OSP to investigate the former law maker who openly confessed to paying bribe during his tenure as Minister of State.

The former Roads Minister, in an interview on live television in January, openly confessed payment of about 3million Ghana Cedis as an enticement fee during the 2020 NPP parliamentary primaries.

Mr Aduomi revealed he paid 5000 cedis to each of the 600 delegates to entice them to endorse his candidature and vote for him.

But despite paying that huge sum of money, he lost his seat in the elections to his strongest opponent – Lawyer John Kumah.

Following this comment, he has received public condemnation with many especially on social media expressing disappointment in him as a leader.

Others believe it could affect his chances after declaring his interest in contesting the NPP Ashanti Regional Chairmanship position.

But the Ghana Watch Alliance on Monday petitioned the Office of the Special Prosecutor to investigate the matter.

According to the group, the confession by Mr Aduomi is a clear case of corruption and must be investigated.

Precedence
The call has become necessary because in November 2021, the Special Prosecutor invited the Juaben Municipal Chief Executive nominee, Alex Sarfo- Kantanka, for questioning over corruption and corruption related offenses after he publicly demanded a refund of monies paid as bribe to some assembly members to entice them to endorse his candidature. 

“We believe that for a former Minister of State to publicly sit on national television to voice out his personal bribery payments in the past with such high esteem cannot be overlooked in our quest to fight corruption in this country,” the statement reads.

The OSP has meanwhile in a statement on January 25, asked members of the public with knowledge act of corruption or corruption-related offences to lodge complaints with the OSP against any such official.

Corruption Watch
Ghana has been ranked 73rd out of 180 countries in the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released January 25, 2022 by Transparency International (TI) with a score of 43 out of a total of 100.

This CPI score indicates that Ghana failed to make progress in the fight against corruption in the year 2021 as the score of 43 is the same as the country’s 2020 score, Transparency International has said.