President John Dramani Mahama has issued a warning to his own ministers and senior government officials, telling them directly that the 2025 Auditor General’s report would put them squarely in the spotlight and that they needed to ensure their ministries were operating within the law.
The warning came during a question and answer session at a presidential dialogue with civil society organisations on Monday, where President Mahama also defended the pace of accountability proceedings against individuals accused of wrongdoing under previous administrations.
“The 2025 audit reports will be the report of these guys sitting here, you people sitting here,” President Mahama told the room, which included ministers and senior government officials he had invited to the dialogue.
“You better check your ministries and make sure that everything is being done right,” he added
He said the 2025 Auditor General’s report was already being worked on, and that once completed it would be reviewed for evidence of criminality and financial misconduct in the same way current reports were being handled.
New courts opened by the Chief Justice specifically to handle cases arising from the Auditor General’s reports were now operational, he said, and would be used to pursue both surcharges and criminal charges where the evidence warranted it.
On public frustration over the slow pace of prosecutions for alleged past wrongdoing, President Mahama was unapologetic.
He said Ghana’s constitutional framework required that every accused person be presumed innocent until proven guilty in court, that investigations had to be thorough before cases were filed, and that a poorly prepared case that collapsed in court served nobody.
“Better to investigate properly and take a well-prepared case to court than to be moved by the pressures of the public and hurry to build a docket that the judge throws out,” he said.
He said the Minister of Justice was already managing at least seven to eight cases in the courts simultaneously while continuing to build additional dockets, and appealed to the public for patience with a process that, while slow, was the only legitimate path available under the rule of law.
President Mahama said the wheel of justice, as former President Mills had put it, ground slowly but ground fine — and that the country had to choose between respecting its constitutional order and abandoning it for something faster but far more dangerous.
Richard Aniagyei, ISD
