The main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has told President Nana Akufo-Addo that the fight against corruption goes beyond delivering speeches of empty rhetoric with an affected accent.

“President Akufo-Addo must accept full responsibility for the unenviable accolade as the most corrupt President in Ghana’s history, which hangs around his neck and find out why it is so. First, accept it, and go and find out why are they putting it on me then you’re about solving the problem”, the General Secretary of the NDC, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia told journalists at a press conference on Tuesday, 10 September 2019 in Accra.

“The answer is not farfetched”, he said, “As the people of this country have been witnesses to the hypocritical and duplicitous attitude with which he has approached corruption”.

“He [President Akufo-Addo] believes, somehow, that flowery speeches and empty rhetoric delivered in an acquired accent is what convinces people that corruption is being fought”, the former MP said, adding: “It has been established beyond all reasonable doubt that corruption is a way of life for the President and his government”.

Mr Nketia said President Akufo-Addo “demonstrated clearly” during his speech at the Bar Conference in the Western Region on Monday, 9 September 2019, that “he was not in touch with the realities of the time: that he heads the most corrupt government in the history of Ghana”.

“Rather than confront this resounding verdict of well-meaning Ghanaians, he opted for the path of delusion and denial. In summary, President Akufo-Addo lowered the bar for the fight against corruption at the Bar Conference”.

“According to President Akufo-Addo, the avalanche of evidence of corruption which has made his government a laughing stock and the butt of all jokes, is but a creation of us in opposition. He doesn’t think he’s responsible for all those accolades that he has earned and so on, but he thinks everything is just the creation of the opposition.

“He also made the astonishing claim that he has investigated every allegation of corruption and that he was not the infamous ‘Clearing Agent’ that Ghanaians have known him to be.

“We wish to call on the President to jolt himself back to reality and face the truth, which is that the Ghanaian public has lost all faith in him to do anything about the mountain of corruption under which his government has been buried.

“The multiplicity of polls and surveys carried out by credible national and international organisations show deteriorating confidence in his ability to win the fight against corruption.

“Ghanaians are unified in the belief that our country has been overrun by corruption with the president sitting at the apex of a cabal representing this. The clergy, the media, civil society and other interest groups including conscientious elders of the NPP itself have all been unanimous in their condemnation of the level of corruption under Akufo-Addo”, Mr Nketia said.

In his view, the President’s “failure to admit the existence of corruption in his government is a very clear indication that he does not even recognise the problem and cannot be counted upon to address it. Because if you don’t know the problem, how can you solve it? You must recognise that we have a problem, which is a corruption problem; and he says there’s no problem. So, those of you who are counting on him and hoping that one day he’ll get up and fight corruption, your hopes will be dashed because he doesn’t even recognise that there is a problem to be solved”.

He said the President’s “claim that the uncountable number of corrupt deals and practices that have come to light since he assumed office” is the doing of the opposition “is yet another example of a leader who totally out of sync with the aspirations and concerns of the people he governs”.

The Ghanaian people, Mr Asiedu Nketia said, “have been long aware that corruption is only fought on the basis of concrete steps aimed at preventing it from occurring in the first place, detecting its occurrence and punishing those engaged in it. If today, President Akufo-Addo is dismissed as a corrupt leader, it is the outcome of his own decision to make corruption the foundation of his government”.