The Sunyani Local Accountability Network (LANet) has sensitized some Junior High School students in the Sunyani Municipality on electoral corruption offences, an affront to the nation’s electoral laws.
Students of the Kuotokrom Municipal Assembly and the Nyamaa Basic Schools in the Sunyani Municipality were sensitized on voting buying and selling, under-age voting and ballot and results manipulation.
With the support from the Ghana Anti-Corruption (GACC), the sensitization, according to Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Secretary of LANet formed part of activities to commemorate this year’s African Union (AU)’s Annual Anti-Corruption Day (AACD).
Held every year on July 11, the AACD celebration aims to recognise the progress that has been made in fighting corruption across the continent and reiterate the need to move with the times in developing approaches to end corruption.
It also provides an opportunity to reflect on the catastrophic consequences of corruption on the lives of ordinary African citizens acros
s the continent, and to sustain the impetus needed to effectively tackle the scourge.
This year’s edition is the eighth and is being commemorated under the theme: ‘effective whistle-blowers protect mechanism: a critical tool in the fight against corruption’.
Addressing them at separate meetings at Kuotokrom and Sunyani, Mr Ahenu informed the students corruption remained the bane of accelerated national development, saying, the country loses close to GHC15 billion in 2022 due to corruption.
Corruption results in poor governance and weakened institutions, undermining their legitimacy by negatively impacting citizens’ perceptions of fairness.
Mr Ahenu said with the fight against corruption, the country could minimize foreign borrowings and also no more over-relied on foreign aid and the World Bank for her development agenda.
‘No patriotic citizen would engage in socio-economic and political corruption’, he stated and therefore urged the students to be guarded so that ambitious political parties and politici
ans would influence them with money and use them as conduit to perpetuate political violence.
Mr Ahenu also advised not to partake in political violence, saying they and their mothers and siblings would bear the brunt or suffer, if the country was plunged into political instability and hostilities.
Source: Ghana News Agency