Krif Foundation Hosts Good Corporate Governance Forum

By G.D. Zaney

A Roundtable on the Ghana Good Corporate Governance Initiative--the fourth in a series--has taken place in Accra.

The Roundtable, organized by Krif Foundation, was on the theme: Good Corporate Ghana: The role of the youth in combating corruption.

This initiative seeks to focus on the prevention of corruption through the building of integrity among the youth.

In an address to welcome participants, made up of Students Representative Council Executives from the eleven tertiary institutions in the Greater Accra region, Mr Mike Ohene-Effah, CEO, Krif Foundation, urged the current crop of student leaders not to perpetuate the ills that had made Ghana and Africa underdeveloped.

Mr Ohene-Effah admonished students to stop receiving money from politicians to run student politics, adding that student leaders could consolidate their power and engage more politically through demonstrations, protests, petitions and statements.

In a panel discussion, the call was that politicians should not be the focus for fighting corruption and that the youth should resist, reject and report corrupt practices and tendencies themselves.

In a presentation, Ms Beauty Emefa Nartey, Executive Secretary, Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, cited the youth for being gradually socialized into corruption which, she said, manifested through examination malpractices, sex for grades, vote buying, fraud, cybercrime and embezzlement, for which a number of student leaders from the country's tertiary institutions had faced criminal charges.

She noted that the staggering figures reported in student leadership embezzlement scandals were gradually mirroring performances on the national stage and that the youth were no longer the victims of corruption but were beginning to be among the perpetrators.

Ms Nartey urged the youth to endeavour to learn about corruption and its negative effects, get actively involved in anti-corruption causes through volunteering with anti-corruption institutions and to strive to make transparency and accountability part of their leadership principles.

She reminded them that a corruption-free Ghana stood to benefit from better public service delivery and good governance, hence the need to begin to champion the fight against corruption in their respective schools, colleges and universities.

She said the youth could not afford to stand aloof while corrupt people mortgaged and ruined their future and urged them to actively contribute to the fight against corruption through citizen-journalism by exposing corrupt persons and reporting acts of corruption.

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