President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has insisted that former Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelevo, was not forcibly removed from office, stating that he duly retired.
He said Domelevo’s exit was purely on grounds that he had attained the mandatory retirement age and was due to retire.
Nana Akufo-Addo suggested that Domelevo’s failure to apprise himself of the country’s laws on retirement and abiding by them was the cause for the controversies surrounding his exit.
“There’s a time for retiring which is prescribed by statute, not my making. If you are 60 years old you are no longer supposed to be able to work in the public service…The Auditor-General, like me, should be some of the first to recognize the laws in our country,” he added in an interview with CNN.
Domelevo’s controversial exit from office earlier this year, for some Ghanaians, smacked of hounding by the government supposedly because he had commenced investigations into activities by some top government officials.
But President Akufo-Addo defended his government’s action against Domelevo, insisting that he only implemented the country’s law on retirement.
President Akufo-Addo used the opportunity to tout his achievements in the fight against corruption.
“For the anti-corruption institutions of our country, when I came into office, [they] were very poorly resourced. We can talk all we like about corruption and make all the wonderful statements but if the instruments at your disposal for dealing with it are weak and blunt, you will get no result,” he said.
Some anti-corruption watchers in the country had said the government’s fight against corruption was in shambles.
But President Akufo-Addo, in making his submission on CNN, said he is satisfied with the effectiveness of his government’s anti-corruption fight.
According to the president, Ghana’s improved ranking on global corruption indexes is a testament to how well the government has performed.
“Am I satisfied that we’ve been effective? I will say yes. A lot has been done, and it is reflected in Ghana’s growing position and rankings of corruption in the world. We’ve gone up several notches since I came into office because we are dealing with these matters at the basic level,” he added.
