Policy analyst and engineer, Michael Kosi Dedey has stressed that real-time monitoring of government procurement and projects is crucial if Ghana is serious about effectively tackling corruption.
He argued that corruption in Ghana often flourishes due to the absence of active oversight of ongoing procurement activities. He urged authorities to implement live, day-to-day monitoring systems to track public contracts and project execution in real time.
“We should have a rigorous process of monitoring ongoing projects and procurement that is going on. For me, that is another way to fight corruption,” he asserted.
Dedey lamented that the state typically responds to corruption only after funds have been lost or misused, instead of taking proactive measures to prevent it. He noted that waiting for scandals to emerge before acting is both inefficient and detrimental to national development.
“The issues where the horses have run out of the barn, and we go chasing them, don’t help this country. We need to be looking at existing procurement that is going on now and ask questions, rather than waiting for the money to be lost and then go after them.”
He maintained that Ghana’s anti-corruption strategy must shift from reactive investigations to proactive prevention, emphasising that live auditing mechanisms could significantly reduce procurement-related scandals.
“For me, the fight against corruption should go beyond chasing after what has possibly been lost to also looking at what has happened now. I think there needs to be some live monitoring of procurement going on so that we can [act] daily,” he said.
Kosi Dedey’s call comes in the wake of a high-profile arrest linked to the Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) contract scandal.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor has arrested three former Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) officials, including former Commissioner-General Rev. Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, over suspected corruption related to revenue assurance services.
