When I think about the scandals and looting of state resources over the last few years, one question keeps nagging me: what have we actually done to fix the control weaknesses that made those possible in the first place?
Because right now, the state is always playing catch-up, chasing stolen money, commissioning forensic audits, recovering what little it can.
Take the National Service ghost names scandal. What assurance do we have that the current NSS management isn’t introducing its own set of ghosts and exploiting the same weaknesses? We didn’t replace the old management with angels. We replaced them with human beings operating inside the same broken system.
The Auditor General must move beyond periodic, after-the-fact auditing and embrace proactive continuous auditing. AI and data analytics make it possible to build tools that test controls on an ongoing basis, flagging anomalies in payroll data, procurement patterns, and expenditure flows in near real-time, before the damage compounds.
The logic is simple: early detection saves money, preserves accountability, and changes the incentive structure for would-be bad actors who currently bank on the lag between action and discovery.
We cannot keep spending state resources to recover stolen state resources. That’s a losing game!
What is wrong with @WhatsApp ? You banned my account like 4 times in the space of 7 days and unbanning it after asking for a review only to permanently ban the account today. They accused me of spamming which is never true. Madness
In opposition, they wrote the Agyapadea Book as a theory/guide of what to do.
In power and under the GoldBod/Bawa Rock deal, they are implementing it to perfection.
Greed will kill us all.
@Asiedu_4@obiMpenaAustine He picked this part of the article. Essentially, Uncle Kofi is saying that any entity buying gold from small-scale miners in Ghana buys 80% from galamsayers. His conclusion is flawed.
@ObengWise69@Serwaa_Amihere Some people should have been donated for sacrifice when they were born, but their parents said they worship the 'Abrahamic God'. Now see the problem we have to deal with.
There’s the one tonne now added for Bawumia 🤣🤣. But seriously, it didn’t make sense for the government to keep adding to the gold reserves when prices were at historically high levels. The new administration did the right thing by selling and injecting the forex into the market to support the cedi.
It appears that, following discussions after the budget presentation, the government has moved National Security’s budget under the Ministry of the Interior. It was previously under the Office of Government Machinery (OGM), which had led to significant misrepresentation. This also aligns with the President’s designation of the Minister for the Interior to oversee National Security.
The budget cuts under OGM are now clearer. The 2025 OGM budget, including IGF, is GH¢950 million lower than in 2024. Compensation remains broadly at 2024 levels, factoring in the 10% public sector pay increase. However, when you include compensation for the former Ministry of Information—now Government Communications—overall compensation under OGM is actually lower than in 2024.
The most significant cut is in goods and services: GoG-funded allocation for this category has dropped from GH¢924 million in 2024 to GH¢298 million in 2025. Capital expenditure has also declined—from GH¢612 million to GH¢170 million. The government deserves credit for making such substantial cuts to discretionary spending at the Office of Government Machinery.