The Special Prosecutor, Mr Martin Amidu says his office was almost forgotten prior to the 2019 budget reading by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori -Atta in November 2018.
Mr Amidu said this on January 14, 2019, in an interview with Citinews monitored by PrimeNewsGhana in Accra.
In November 2018, the Minister of Finance, KenOfori-Atta, announced a GH¢180 million budgetary allocation to the Office of Special Prosecutor to help it effectively undertake its mandate in 2019.
However, that wouldn’t have happened if Martin Amidu, the Special Prosecutor had not been consistent and taken personal initiatives in that regard.
He explained that although his office should have been engaged much earlier in the year concerning the budget, they had not received any such notice, hence his decision to prepare a budget himself and submit it to the Finance Minister for consideration in October 2018.
“Many people don’t know how the budget went there [Ministry of Finance]. I myself on my own submitted the budget in October. Nobody asked for it. I was almost forgotten about. I was forgotten about entirely until I prepared my own budget and submitted it,†Martin Amidu said.
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He also commended Ken Ofori-Atta, finance Minister for considering his Office’s budget in the face of the dire challenges they were confronted with.
“The ideal process is that I should have been in the budget preparation process since January last year. By October, nobody had submitted any request for me to submit anything, I did it on my own with people I had gathered round. My luck is that we had a gentleman as a Minister of Finance who understood my plight and when he noticed it, he took it up,†the Special Prosecutor said.