It didn’t take long for the new government of John Mahama in Ghana to find a dramatic way to highlight its commitment to combating corruption. On 12 February 2025 his special prosecutor declared the previous finance minister a “wanted fugitive” for going abroad to evade questioning for suspected financial irregularities, before later agreeing to schedule a return.
In that one move, the government of Mahama’s National Democratic Congress sounded a couple of familiar notes from past campaigns. First, that the widespread graft so many Ghanaians bemoan was largely the fault of the other party, in this case the New Patriotic Party, voted out the previous December. And second, that dishonesty and misconduct are most damaging when they involve high public officials.
The reality of corruption lived by ordinary Ghanaians is far more complicated than that. Across the past 30 years of electoral democracy, both parties have been tainted by scandal and malfeasance. And over the country’s much longer history, as I detail in a new book, Ghanaians have complained about a wide range of misdeeds by figures in both the public and private realms, in positions high and low.
