Senior Vice President of IMANI-Africa, Kofi Bentil, has called on Ghanaians to be patient with the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).
According to him, calling for the dissolution of the OSP which has been in existence only since 2018 is rather premature.
He was reacting to the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin’s remark that the creation of the OSP was an act in futility.
According to Mr. Bagbin, rather than creating the OSP, the government should have decoupled the Attorney-General’s Department from the Ministry of Justice.
He stressed that the office, under this circumstance, will not achieve any results in the fight against corruption.
But Kofi Bentil has said Ghanaians are fond of wanting quick solutions to systematic problems.
“I have to also say one of the problems I think in Ghana over these decades of public policy advocacy is that we tend to want very quick solutions. How old is the office of the Special Prosecutor? What has been the experience so far?
“We have had Mr. Martin Amidu who came in, all of us were elated, I can tell you honestly that some of us were told that Mr. Martin Amidu may not be able to achieve much. And these are people who were close to him.
“We didn’t listen, we thought look he was the greatest, we hailed him and what happened, happened. We now have lawyer Kissi Agyebeng there, how long has he been in office? How long have we resourced him? But already I can tell you lawyer Kissi Agyebeng the OSP is doing things that were unthinkable,” he said.
According to him, while the current OSP has not been in office long enough, what he has managed to achieve in this short period has been overwhelming.
“In all our experience as an independent country, some of the things that had happened in this short time were not things that we could have contemplated being done by a sitting Attorney General. So look, it is too early to cancel that office and call it a failure.
“We want results but some things happen over time and if you ask me I think we’re on the path. What we need to have is patience and continue to work at it to make sure that this thing works,” he said.
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