Prof Adei’s claim that corruption was worse under Mahama’s gov’t completely false

A former chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Prof Stephen Adei, has said there is improvement in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) under President Akufo-Addo as compared to the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama government.

Prof. Adei was commenting on Ghana’s economic challenges on Thursday, April 7, 2022, on Accra FM. He cited data from Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index to advance his argument.

Fact-Check Ghana has verified the claim and presents the verdict below.

Claim: “Based on statistics from Transparency International, corruption in Ghana is high. The corruption perception index is used to detect the country’s rate of corruption.   Per that data, we are now hovering around 41, 42. If it goes up, it means corruption is low. It is too much and we need to be careful. It was worse under Mahama. It has improved a bit under Akufo-Addo, but I don’t think it has improved enough to make Ghanaians feel comfortable.”

Verdict: Completely false

Explanation: Throughout former President John Mahama’s administration, Ghana’s worst score according to the Corruption Perception Index was 43, recorded in 2016. The highest during the period was 48 in 2014, which is also the highest the country has recorded in the last ten years.

In 2013, Ghana scored 46 on the corruption perception index and 47 in 2015.

Meanwhile, during Akufo-Addo’s tenure from 2017 till now, the country has recorded the lowest ever CPI in the last ten years. The CPI score dropped from 43 in 2016 to 40 in 2017. In 2018, it increased by one making it 41, and remained so until 2020 and 2021 when it moved to 43.

Thus, in the whole five years of Akufo-Addo’s presidency, Ghana’s best score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is 43 out of 100. This is the worst score Ghana recorded in the John Mahama era.

With these facts, Prof. Adei’s claim that Ghana’s CPI “was worse under Mahama” and “has improved a bit under Akufo-Addo” is completely false.

Below is a graphical representation of the CPI scores since 2012 as presented by Transparency International.

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