The AG’s Corruption Revelations Reflect Badly on Himself

The Attorney General’s recent public crusade against corruption in the previous administration is, on the surface, an act of accountability. The revelations have been made in dramatic fashion — press statements, selective leaks, and courtroom declarations — all meant to signal a renewed seriousness about cleaning up public life. But behind the spectacle lies an uncomfortable truth: the Attorney General’s own record makes him a poor messenger for the message he now carries.

It is not that the allegations he raises are unimportant. Far from it. Every serious instance of corruption deserves scrutiny. The problem is the messenger’s credibility. The same Attorney General who now paints others as emblematic of official rot is the one who has quietly cleared or declined to prosecute similar cases when they involved officials from his own party. The inconsistency is not merely political; it is institutional. It corrodes the very idea of justice.

A true Attorney General is the lawyer for the Republic — not for the ruling party. When justice begins to wear the colours of the government of the day, it ceases to be justice. It becomes vengeance dressed in legal robes. That is the uncomfortable scent around the current series of accusations: they may be legally sound, but they are morally compromised.

The defendants in these new corruption cases would not be out of place to question the propriety of their prosecutor. If selective justice is the new standard, then the entire process risks collapsing under its own contradictions. The courts should take notice of this and insist on the independence and integrity of prosecution, not the political choreography that now passes for it.

The deeper danger, however, goes beyond personalities. What the Attorney General has done — perhaps without realising it — is to ensure that corruption itself will continue. Each time the fight against graft is turned into a partisan weapon, it reinforces the very system it claims to attack. Today’s accuser becomes tomorrow’s accused. The cycle continues, untouched and unbroken.

Ghanaians have seen this play out too many times to be impressed. Each administration promises to clean house; each one ends up sweeping the dirt into a different corner. What is missing is not evidence, but equality — the simple idea that the law applies to everyone or to no one at all.

If the Attorney General truly wants to be remembered for fighting corruption, he must begin by holding his own side to the same standard he applies to others. Otherwise, his revelations will be remembered not as a turning point, but as another performance in a long-running show — one that always ends the same way: with no convictions, no reforms, and no justice.

The day of reckoning for Ghana’s political class has once again been postponed. We continue to wait, perhaps foolishly, for the day when the law will finally mean what it says.