Former President John Dramani Mahama has called for the intensification of stakeholder efforts and engagement on the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP).

The NACAP was unanimously passed in 2014 as the country’s coordinated anti-corruption policy in line with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC).

Implementation of the strategy began in 2015 after the validation of a reporting tool to assist partners in the reporting of the execution of their roles under NACAP.

Since the implementation began in 2015, two progress reports on the country’s performance have been issued at the end of 2015 and 2016.

According to John Mahama, the sidelining of the NACAP by the current government is an unfortunate development which he intends to remedy should he be voted into office during the 2024 general elections.

“It is sad observing Ghana’s performance on the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index score card after many years of NACAP’s existence. This is not how we programmed NACAP to be. NACAP can do better! And NACAP must do better!”

“God willing, in 2025, when I have the opportunity to be the President of Ghana who has been a President before, I will come with priceless experience to fix our broken nation. I want us to build the Ghana we want together by writing – not footnotes, not pages but – chapters in the anticorruption history of our dear country Ghana. We must also uphold human rights, including freedom of expression and not be describing some journalists as terrorists,” he said at the launch of his JM 2024 fundraising platform at UPSA.

This year, Ghana placed 8^th in sub-Saharan Africa behind Seychelles, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Rwanda, Mauritius, Namibia and Sao Tome and Principe. Ghana shared the same spot with Senegal and South Africa. Ghana placed 9^th last year.

In the latest CPI, Ghana ranked 72 out of 180 countries/territories assessed annually by Transparency International, the global anti-graft body.

For the third year in a row, the country scored 43 out of 100 on the index, which measures the levels of perceived corruption in the systems of various countries around the world. The maximum points a country can score is 100 points. For a country to be ranked average, it needs at least 50 points.

Ghana’s best CPI score in the past 11 years was in 2014 when the country scored 48. It dropped to 40 in 2017, went up marginally to 41 in 2018, stayed that way in 2019 before climbing marginally to 43 which it has maintained in 2020, 2021 and 2022.