President John Dramani Mahama
The Director of Policy Engagements and Partnerships at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Dr Kojo Pumpuni Asante, has said that President John Dramani Mahama should not have accepted the donation of two vehicles, even though he later declared them and handed them over to the state.
Speaking in an interview with JoyNews on May 6, 2025, Dr Asante expressed strong disapproval of the president’s actions, stating that accepting such a gift could compromise both his position and the integrity of the presidency.
He raised concerns about the potential for the president to be influenced by these gifts.
“I think it’s a no, no, because these are high-value gifts. How are you going to determine whether the President gets influenced or not in those kinds of scenarios? Inasmuchas we want to discourage private individuals or people of any kind, it’s the President we are talking about and the President has a lot of power to create these kinds of conflict-of-interest scenarios that you can’t really cure because it’s very difficult to establish any benefit one way or the other,” he said.
Dr Asante acknowledged that addressing behaviours where private individuals offer gifts to political appointees or the President in an attempt to win favour can be challenging, and would require sustained and dedicated efforts to combat it effectively.
He, however, called for the adoption of practical approaches to address the issue of gift-giving to politically exposed persons and appointees, arguing that relying solely on a threshold for gift declarations is not the most effective solution.
According to Dr Asante, such an approach may fail to promote accountability and could ultimately defeat the purpose of transparency.
“So, as much as possible, we should just avoid these entirely. Because we are so used to doing these things, making this change in behaviour will be very uncomfortable, but if we are really resetting, we really cannot leave room for incentivising people in influential positions.
“There’s a lot of best practice across the world. We just have to look at them carefully and apply them. If we really want to raise the standard of accountability and integrity, then there’s no room for accepting valuable gifts,” he added.
Dr Asante made these remarks in response to the unveiling of a Code of Conduct by President Mahama for his appointees, during which the President publicly disclosed that he had received two high-value vehicles as gifts — gifts he later handed over to the state.
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