The Office of the Special Prosecutor has come under pressure following its revelation of who Government Official 1 is in his investigations on the Airbus SE corruption allegations assigned to it by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on 2nd February, 2020.
In addressing the status of the Airbus investigations, the Special Prosecutor revealed that his office has established the identity of the elected Government Official 1 to be former President John Dramani Mahama.
The NDC flag bearer in his reaction to the report has called the description of himself as Government Official 1 by the Special Prosecutor as “stupid”.
However, in the wake of the sentiments expressed by the former President; Executive Director of the Civil Society Organization, Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) Mensah Thompson; has in a press conference called the Special Prosecutor a coward for refusing to investigate and prosecute the former President John Mahama on the corruption allegations.
Mensah Thompson stated that there is no law in the constitution that prevents the Special Prosecutor from investigating anybody just because he is contesting an election.
In his address to the press Mensah Thompson worried that the Special Prosecutor risked creating a legal quagmire and indeed a dangerous precedent in the fight against corruption in Ghana by saying that the former president “got himself an insurance as the Presidential candidate of the other largest political party in Ghana.”
His statement emphasized that there is the urgent need by the Special Prosecutor, to act if his office has established that indeed some corruption had taken place in the Airbus transaction and that knowing that John Mahama is Government Official 1 is useless to Ghanaians unless it’s put in the context of a completed report of the corruption allegation.
He ended by calling on the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to remove Mr. Martin A.B.K Amidu – Special Prosecutor from office as he risked destroying the effectiveness of the flagship office created to fight corruption by not going ahead to investigate John Mahama now that he knows he is Government Official 1.
