IMANI Launches Campaign for Public Asset Declarations (Pushes for Transparency, Accountability)
Franklin Cudjoe is in charge of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education. They have started a campaign called “Opening the Envelope” to question the secrecy of asset declarations by high-ranking Ghanaian government officials. The initiative wants to use the Right to Information Act 2019 (Act 989) to force people to share their asset records so that wealth can be tracked over time and accountability and transparency can be improved. The campaign will start with test cases involving Cecilia Abena Dapaah, the former sanitation minister, and Mohammed Baba Jamal Ahmed, the former deputy minister. The goal is to set a legal precedent for public access. IMANI has a step-by-step legal plan that starts with formal RTI requests to the Auditor General, moves on to the Right to Information Commission, and ends with a judicial review if necessary. In addition to legal decisions, the group pushes for an asset register that is open to the public, ways to check information, annual filings, and automatic penalties for not following the rules.
