"Go beyond identifying financial irregularities" - Prof. Francis Dodoo challenges Ghana Audit Service

Presidential Advisor on the National Anti-Corruption Programme, Professor Francis Dodoo, has challenged the Ghana Audit Service to move beyond identifying financial irregularities and ensure that public funds found to have been misappropriated are effectively recovered.

He said auditors must remain committed to protecting the interests of the wider community rather than shielding individuals whose actions had caused financial losses to the state.

Professor Dodoo made the call at the 2026 Financial Year Audit Launch on the theme, “Strengthening Accountability Oversight in Public Institutions: Building Trust through Collaboration and Action.”

He argued that efforts to protect individuals implicated in financial misconduct often failed to recognise the wider damage caused to communities and ordinary citizens.

According to him, auditors should not allow personal relationships, pressure or appeals for leniency to interfere with their professional responsibility to expose wrongdoing.

“Whenever the question is one of whether I should be the friend of an individual to the detriment of the community by helping alleviate or not expose his behaviour or misappropriation, I would suggest that our culture in this country should rather incline us to be a friend to the community.”

Professor Dodoo said the people who ultimately suffer when public resources are lost are ordinary citizens who depend on those resources for essential services and development.

He therefore urged auditors to see their work as a responsibility to the wider public, stressing that the manner in which they discharge their duties would determine the level of trust communities place in public institutions.

According to Professor Dodoo, approximately a quarter of the 2024 losses involved cash irregularities, including payments made without proper documentation.

He also cited GH¢8.1 million in expenditure claims that were rejected by the Auditor-General after being identified as recoverable.

He said the figures demonstrated the scale of resources that could be lost to weaknesses in public financial management.

Professor Dodoo stressed that whether such losses resulted from inefficiency or deliberate misappropriation, their impact on the country and ordinary Ghanaians could not be ignored.

As the Audit Service begins the 2026 audit cycle, Professor Dodoo urged auditors to fully utilise the powers available to them under Article 187 of the 1992 Constitution, particularly in relation to disallowance and surcharge.

He said identifying irregular expenditure and disallowing it should not necessarily be the end of the process where the circumstances warranted further action.

Professor Dodoo argued that the Audit Service must ensure that persons responsible for financial losses are appropriately surcharged and that recoveries are actually enforced.

He illustrated his point with a hypothetical example involving the misappropriation of GH¢10 million.

He said if an individual unlawfully benefited from GH¢10 million and the money was only identified and recovered several years later, simply returning the original amount could mean that the individual had enjoyed the financial benefit of using or investing the money during the intervening period.

Using Treasury bill rates of around 18 percent as an illustration, he argued that the financial benefit derived from holding public funds for an extended period could be significant.

Professor Dodoo therefore called for surcharge mechanisms that would appropriately address such benefits, subject to the applicable legal framework.

Professor Dodoo said effective accountability required the Audit Service to follow the entire chain—from identifying irregularities, to disallowance, surcharge and ultimately recovery.

He warned that without effective enforcement, audit findings could fail to deliver the intended deterrent effect.

He urged auditors to ensure that those responsible for financial irregularities did not simply return the principal amount years later after having benefited from the funds.

According to him, such a situation could create the wrong incentives and undermine efforts to protect public resources.

Professor Dodoo said the Audit Service had a critical role to play in Ghana's fight against corruption and in strengthening public confidence in the management of state resources.

He urged auditors to remain firmly on the side of the public whenever the interests of individuals conflicted with those of the wider community.

“Please, by all means, disallow; please, by all means, surcharge appropriately, and then follow through to enforce recoveries.”

He said consistent enforcement of these measures would contribute significantly to reforming the audit function and strengthening accountability in Ghana's public institutions.

Story by: Joshua Kwabena Smith