Anti-corruption campaigner Vitus Azeem has urged Ghanaians to exercise patience with the government’s ongoing Operation Recover All Looted Assets (ORAL) initiative, acknowledging widespread frustration over what many see as slow progress.
Speaking on Morning Starr with Naa Dedei Tettey on Tuesday, October 21, Mr. Azeem admitted that public expectations were high but stressed the need for due process.
He explained that while the Attorney General’s office has been criticised for delays, logistical and procedural hurdles — including the recent legal vacation — may have slowed the process.
“The point is that this ORAL thing had raised a lot of expectations from a lot of Ghanaians and they were expecting swift action,” Azeem said.
“They had gone on vacation and so even if you wanted a search warrant from the court, it might have been a problem or if you were ready to proceed to court and the courts were not sitting, that might have been a problem,” he noted.
Despite recognising these challenges, Mr. Azeem said the government has still fallen short of public expectations.
“The impression we had was that there was so much money that people had touched into their private pockets and that ORAL was aimed at recovering these monies… We were expecting that by now, we had information about the number of people that have been arrested, vacated, monies recovered or at least people sent to jail, but we are not seeing that,” he lamented.
He, however, dismissed suggestions that ORAL was politically motivated, insisting it was launched after the elections and therefore not intended to influence voters.
“The ORAL was established after the elections, after they had won the elections, so the NDC did not need to start the ORAL to get any votes from us,” he clarified.
Mr. Azeem’s remarks come amid growing public debate about the government’s anti-corruption efforts, as Ghanaians await tangible results and transparency from the ORAL investigations.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
