Prof. Adei wrongly claims corruption ‘was worse under Mahama’ per CPI data

Professor Stephen Adei, a former rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, GIMPA, has in a recent interview claimed that despite ‘too much corruption’ in the current government, the situation was worse under the John Dramani Mahama administration.

The academic and trained economist did not give any figure to back his claims except to cite the latest ranking of the Corruption Perception Index, CPI, by Transparency International.

Parts of comments he made on Accra FM earlier this week were as follows: “The statistics, the evidence from Transparency International show that corruption has gone up too much. Per their Corruption Perception Index, we are currently hovering around 41, 42 per cent.

“It is too much,” he stressed before adding; “It was worse under Mahama.”

GhanaWeb traced a fact check by Ismael Batoma of our FactCheck desk back in January 2022 on corruption fight in the four years of John Mahama (2013 -2016) as against Akufo-Addo’s first term (2017 – 2020).

Transparency International recently released the global 2021 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) with Ghana scoring 43 out of 100.

Ghana’s performance was the same as last year and this has led to the worrying question of whether or not Ghana’s corruption fight is dwindling.

This is even more concerning considering the current government’s promise to be resolute about fighting corruption to the core.

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) said the score of 43 by Ghana indicates the country did not make progress in its fight against corruption in 2021 as the score remains in 2022.

GhanaWeb takes a look at Ghana’s performance on the CPI over the past 10 years to give readers an understanding of the country’s performance on the index under the past government and the ruling government.

The verdict:

From an analysis of the CPI statistics, it emerged that the professor’s assessment was inaccurate.

In the past nine years, Ghana’s highest score was in 2014, when Ghana scored 48. The lowest score in the Mahama administration was 43, which is the best under Akufo-Addo, whose lowest score was 40, a figure recorded in 2017, his first year in office.

Read the full analysis below:

CPI ranking under Mahama:

First let us take a look at the performance of Ghana before President Akufo-Addo was sworn into power in 2017. Data from the Transparency international indicates that Ghana scored;

45 in 2012

46 in 2013

48 in 2014

There was a drop in 2015 by a point –47 in 2015 and then just before the then President, John Mahama handed over power to the new government, the country’s score on the corruption perception index had dropped by 4 points to 43 in 2016 – which means there was higher corruption recorded in the last year of the reign of the NDC administration under Mahama.

In terms of ranks on the CPI, Ghana was ranked the 64th the least corrupt country out of 180 countries in 2012, then it ranked 63rd in 2013, 61st in 2014, 56th in 2015 and 70th in 2016.

Corruption under Akufo-Addo:

Having promised to rid the country of the persisting canker of corruption, Ghana scored 40 over 100 in its first year under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2017.

This increased by a point to 41 in 2018
And for the next year, this figure was retained when Ghana scored – 41 in 2019. This number rose by 2 more points in 2020 to become 43 but government failed to increase this score in 2021.

During the term of President Akufo-Addo, Ghana ranked 81st in 2017, 78th in 2018, 80th in 2019, 75th in 2020, and 73rd least corrupt country in 2021.

Where does Ghana stand?

From these figures for the past five years, it could be said that Ghana has not made progress in the fight against corruption. The government inherited an index of 43 and it still scoring 43 which is even an improvement on its previous scores.

According to Transparency International, Ghana’s best performance on the CPI was in 2014 when it scored 48.

The corruption index is measured from 0 to 100. The higher the score of a country the less corrupt it is perceived to be. Countries that score below 50 are perceived to be more corrupt.

Whilst the government insists it has made significant progress in the fight against corruption, very little has been seen as being done by the Special Prosecutor’s office which was established in the first year of his term as president.

The Deputy Information Minister Fatimatu Abubakar, in an interview on Asaase News said Ghana has been making progress on the index since 2017 when it scored 40 out of 100 on the CPI.

“But let us establish the fact that what this government inherited in 2017 was an average of 40, and the measurement is such that the lower you score, the more corrupt you are… so if you look at the trends from 2017, you will realise that no matter how small the figure is, Ghana has been stepping up, from 2017 to 2018 we were up from 40 to 41 and then in 2020 we moved a notch higher,” she was quoted by asaaseradio.

But do the current figures reflect this assertion?

Meanwhile, Transparency International indicates from its findings that Ghana’s best performance was in 2015 when it ranked 56th out of the 180 countries. This means that in the past 9 years, the John Mahama administration recorded the best records as far as the fight against corruption was concerned.

Author: Ishmael Batoma

View the Timepaths of Mahama and Akufo-Addo below: