Manasseh Azure Awuni an award-winning investigative journalist has reminded President John Dramani Mahama that he promised Ghanaians an Operation Recover All Loot and not Operation Clear All Looters (OCAL).
According to Manasseh Azure, Ghanaians deserve to know the basis for the government’s mass discontinuation of court cases against officials and associates of the previous Mahama administration.
Manasseh Azure asserted that cases such as the prosecution of the Democracy Hub protesters may not be surprising that those charges are dropped.
He wrote on X, “A majority of the cases, however, border on corruption and charges of causing financial loss to the state. For a president vowing to reset Ghana and prosecute government officials who have stolen or caused money to be stolen from the public purse, the mass clearance is a wrong start. It’s a dangerous precedent.
What President Mahama is telling the NPP officials his administration will charge is very simple: if you are charged, drag the case as long as you can, and if your party comes into office, the court process will be truncated, and you will be set free”, he added.
The investigative journalist added that this dangerous precedent defeats Mahama’s resolve to fight corruption and defeats such future endeavours.
He added, “The Attorney-General must not truncate prosecution just because he has the power to do so. That power belongs to Ghanaians and must be exercised in our interest.
The courts should be allowed to deal with the evidence and decide on the guilt or innocence of the persons charged. In some cases, the state lost vast sums of money, and we should have answers.
Even with the ambulance case, in which the persons charged were acquitted by the court, the state had lost money. That scandal was not fabricated, even if the wrong actors may have been targeted”, he wrote.
Manasseh Azure Awuni added, “I nicknamed Akufo-Addo the Chief Clearing Agent, and Mahama seems to relish that title. Let us not forget that the persons Akufo-Addo cleared and publicly defended were not all clean. Pius Hadzide, for instance, who was cleared of his involvement in the Australia visa scandal, publicly confessed his role when he was campaigning to be the MP for Asuogyaman in the just-ended election.
If the government clears all its party people standing trial, the people whose power the government exercises must be given sound reasons. Operation Recover All Loot (ORAL) cannot succeed when its implementers are engaged in Operation Clear All Looters (OCAL)”.
See his post below:
CHIEF CLEARING AGENT
*************************
Ghanaians deserve to know the basis for the government’s mass discontinuation of court cases against officials and associates of the previous Mahama administration.A few of the cases, such as the prosecution of the Democracy Hub… pic.twitter.com/qmcnSJAKBu
— Manasseh Azure Awuni (@Manasseh_Azure) February 10, 2025
