Editor of Newscenta Newspaper, Elvis Darko, has questioned the effectiveness and relevance of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) despite the significant resources allocated to it over the years.
Speaking on GHOne TV’s GHToday with Lily Mohammed on Friday, July 18, 2025, Mr. Darko argued that the OSP, which was established nearly eight years ago, has failed to handle any meaningful corruption cases compared to existing investigative bodies such as the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO).
“OSP has been well resourced more than all these investigative bodies. If you go to the records, the police and EOCO have succeeded in prosecuting more cases and getting more results than the OSP,” he said.
According to him, the creation of the OSP was driven mainly by political promises rather than genuine reforms aimed at tackling corruption effectively. He noted that successive governments prefer creating new institutions to give an impression of fighting corruption instead of resourcing existing bodies to deliver better results.
“As a country, instead of fixing our problems, we think that we have to run away from the problem and go and create new institutions, thinking that that’s how to solve problems. So long as we’re not willing to confront the problems head on, we should forget about results. That is what we have found ourselves in,” he lamented.
Mr. Darko explained that the Attorney General’s department has its own challenges, especially with prosecution due to inadequate staffing and poor conditions of service. He argued that investigative bodies like EOCO, the BNI, and CID do thorough work when they are resourced adequately, but often their efforts are limited by funding constraints.
“The AG department has problems with prosecutions because they don’t even have enough lawyers. EOCO, BNI, and CID, if they are given more resources, will do even more than they are doing now. But instead of giving them the resources they need, we pack all the money and the resources and go and put it at the OSP, which lacks the human capacity to be able to do what CID and BNI can do,” he stated.
He further criticised the OSP for what he described as its obsession with public announcements of charges against suspects without building strong prosecutable cases. According to him, investigative bodies that rush to the media only end up creating a perception of action without actual results in court.
“I have always said that investigative bodies that are always rushing to the media, I don’t like it. Because before you come to the media, you should have what it takes to really make a strong case in court. The court of public opinion doesn’t convict people; the court that convicts people and shows that your work is good is the actual court,” he stressed.
Mr. Darko maintained that if a critical analysis was done on the performance of the OSP since its establishment, it would not justify the huge sums of money spent on it.
“If we do a critical analysis of the performance of the OSP for these eight years, compared to EOCO, CID, and the rest, we may say let’s close down the OSP. Because the results that come from there do not justify the amount of resources we are injecting there,” he concluded.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
