Kissi Agyebeng urges civil society to safeguard OSP

Special Prosecutor Kissi Agyebeng has called on civil society groups to take an active role in defending and sustaining the Office of the Special Prosecutor, arguing that the institution’s long-term survival should not depend on its leadership alone.

Addressing a national dialogue on the role and impact of the OSP on Tuesday, 31 March, he said public confidence in the office has been a major indicator of its relevance in Ghana’s anti-corruption landscape.

According to him, support for an independent anti-corruption body remains strong, particularly because many Ghanaians wanted a structure separate from the Attorney-General’s office. He said that trust has given legitimacy to the OSP’s work and underlined the need to protect it from decline.

Agyebeng suggested that the office now belongs, in a broader sense, to the public and to the civic actors who demanded its creation. For that reason, he said, preserving it should be seen as a collective national task rather than the burden of a single office-holder.

He pointed to public opinion indicating that more than 70 per cent of Ghanaians had wanted an independent anti-corruption institution, while more than half of respondents expressed greater confidence in the OSP than in other bodies involved in fighting corruption.

For the Special Prosecutor, those figures were evidence that the office had already justified its existence.

His remarks also took on a personal tone, as he indicated that he has begun reflecting on the end of his tenure. He said he wanted to leave office knowing that civil society had not only supported the formation of the institution, but had also helped secure its future.

In his message to civic groups, the appeal was direct: the Office of the Special Prosecutor must not be allowed to weaken or disappear after all the effort that went into creating it.