The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) of Ghana is a creation of Parliament under Act 959 (2017) and operationalized by L.I. 2374 and L.I. 2373 (both of 2018), with the mandate of prosecuting corruption and corruption-related offences. The office was conceived as an electioneering campaign promise of former President, HE Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and became operational in 2018.
Initial expectations were high for the office with many expecting it to bring an end to, or cause a significant abatement of, high-level corruption among mainly, politically exposed persons, a phenomenon that erodes the gains made by successive governments towards national development.
The office has enjoyed some political goodwill after initial challenges encountered by former Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu. For example, between 2022 and 2024, the erstwhile NPP government allocated a total of 448.5 million Ghana Cedis in employee compensation, capital expenditure and goods and services to the office of about 250 staff. In March 2025, Parliament approved about 147 million Ghana Cedis to the Office, with about 71 million going into employee compensation alone.
This allocation to the OSP has been viewed as highly generous on the part of the new government, considering the poor returns from the office since its establishment nearly 8 years ago. Charges of poor performance, nearly suggestive of fecklessness, were brought up against the office on the floor of Parliament during the debate on the OSP budget, and for good reason. In the entirety of its existence, the OSP has not conclusively disposed of a single case worthy of the great expectations that heralded its inception. Never!
There is a section of Ghanaians, including prominent political figures such as the National Chairman of the governing NDC, who hold the view that the OSP should be collapsed and brought under the ambit of the Office of the Attorney General. There is also a section, including Mr. Kofi Bentil of IMANI Africa, who has been a great supporter of the Office since its inception, that holds a contrary view in this debate. Nonetheless, as far as cost-cutting measures go, the decision to declare any institution as wasteful and scrap it should be guided by a cost-benefit analysis and whether its job can be done by any other existing state institution.
A look at the statistics on the OSP website show a total of 179 complaints ever received, 30 cases listed as being of interest out of which 4 prosecutions were initiated with zero convictions. It is true that not every complaint has merit and, therefore, is worthy of dispensing time and resources on. However, the sharp attenuation from the number of complaints through prosecutions to convictions is very telling and begs explanations to the lay mind.
The OSP has 7 divisions, each headed by a director, with the most important ones to this thesis being the Investigations and Prosecutions Divisions. Because the OSP has prosecutorial powers, cases have first to be investigated by the responsible division (i.e., Investigations Division) before case files are handed over for prosecution by the Prosecutions Division. Therefore, lawyers in the prosecution’s division have the arduous task of securing convictions based on evidence gathered and presented to them by investigators.
It is common knowledge in my own background that there is no amount of statistical competence that can save a researcher from the grips of poor design and execution of experiments. Similarly, a prosecution attorney’s case in court is only as good as the evidence made available to them by investigators. Thus, I borrow from my background to opine that the lack of convictions is possibly due to poor investigations by OSP operatives.
This brings me to the question of how employees of the OSP are selected. Are they the best and brightest of our Police investigators, CID, Psychologists, Profilers and lawyers or are they just the darlings of those with the power to appoint? Are OSP employees themselves incorruptible and disposed to discharging their duties professionally?
If the response to this last question is no, then cases are likely to be dropped for personal pecuniary or other parochial reasons. Mr. Martin Amidu had earlier drawn attention to the possibility of corruption and unlawful conduct within the OSP (see https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Martin-Amidu-chases-Mahama-to-investigate-fraud-unlawful-polygraphing-in-OSP-s-office-1973200).
Also, refer to Scrutinise the Office of the Special Prosecutor on corruption-related cases – Martin Kpebu on Ghanaweb for a recent commentary by Mr. Martin Kpebu on the matter that suggests that the OSP might be liable for confinement to the dustbin of Ghana’s history.
In this country, and in many other places, only the best and brightest are selected into programmes in the medical sciences. Also, researchers in most fields are allowed a maximum of 5% chance of making false claims, but in medical research, this probability is a maximum of 1% because even if one out of a hundred people dies from testing a new vaccine, it is still a great tragedy. I submit that the OSP should be held to such very high standards because collateral damage from an OSP investigation is more damaging, not just to the individual but to society, because targets are otherwise valuable members who are contributing positively to society.
This is why we should all be interested in who works at the OSP and what their competencies are, and then demand accountability from them. Sadly, it is only those who have had some kind of encounter with the office that are motivated enough to pry into their activities and speak to the issues. A case in point is the recent eruption of negative commentary against the Office by loyalists of the NPP since the Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta matter broke.
Aside questions on competence and professionalism, a cursory look at the asset recoveries as displayed on the website of the OSP shows some 3 million Ghana cedis worth of assets recovered despite no one having ever been convicted. This is a loss to the taxpaying Ghanaian, for which a private businessperson exchanges some nearly 500 million cedis in operational costs for total returns of 3 million over a period of 8 years?
Is it possible that the OSP favours seizure of suspected tainted properties over convictions because it is easier to prosecute asset seizure over actual convictions? Or is it the case that a provision that allows the OSP to keep 30% of the “spoils” of recoveries the real motivator?
There is only a handful of high-profile cases ever attempted by the OSP: the Airbus Scandal, Madam Cecilia Dapaah, and now Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta. The Airbus scandal, which was about the biggest, was concluded shortly before the December 7 election and was viewed by many as a placatory termination of the case.
Unsurprisingly, that decision was roundly lambasted by a great number of people as a waste of time and resources. Regardless of the outcome of the Airbus investigation, the OSP has still not won the trust of the new administration of President Mahama.
Most of the ORAL cases being handled by the Attorney General border on corruption and fall directly within the mandate of the OSP. The question is, why have those cases not been transferred to the OSP? Is there a question of loyalty, linked to the earlier question I posed about the mode of selecting staff into the office, or are there doubts about competence?
And herein lies the odd thing about the OSP: why does the state maintain support for an institution that has shown itself irrelevant for the purpose for which it was created?
More Ghanaian voices are demanding accountability from the OSP. As a creation of Parliament, the onus lies on parliamentary oversight to check the operations of the OSP and protect the general citizenry from the burden of support for a failed institution. While the recent efforts of the Honourable Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, Member for Manhyia South, drawing the attention of Ghanaians to the failings of the OSP are commendable (see here: MP questions OSP’s effectiveness, calls for accountability | Ghana News Agency), they are not enough.
We expect our parliamentary representatives to demand accountability from the OSP and bring motions to have it disbanded or reorganised, as required. A full-scale probe may start with journalists or citizens, who are motivated enough, filing the right to information (RTI) for case information and circumstances that led to interdiction or disengagement of past operatives of the OSP.
The expectation was for the OSP to operate as a shark-hunter in our shark-infested waters. Some of us recognise a shark hunter by the fishing methods they employ and the gear they deploy. So, if anyone was interested in finding out why the shark-hunter is struggling to reel in anchovies from a wide-meshed net, they need first to ask why the shark-hunter went to sea with a fish net instead of a harpoon.
If the hunter failed to catch any sharks and needed so badly to bring home anchovies to save face and to keep themselves alive, even if malnourished, why did they not take a mosquito net, which is more effective for anchovies, instead of a leaking, wide-meshed net?
I shall return.
God Bless Our Homeland, Ghana!
