President John Mahama has warned that officials cited for financial irregularities in Auditor-General reports will be made to refund misappropriated state funds or face jail through new specialised courts.
Speaking at a town hall meeting with the Ghanaian diaspora in London on Sunday, Mahama said the government would pursue individuals named in audit reports through newly established audit courts set up to recover lost public money and prosecute offenders. He voiced concern that successive Auditor-General reports keep exposing heavy losses to the state through financial mismanagement and misappropriation, telling the gathering that Ghana sheds billions of cedis each year to such infractions.
The president said the judiciary had taken a major step by creating the specialised courts so that financial breaches attract real sanctions beyond parliamentary scrutiny. The Attorney-General and the Auditor-General, he added, would work closely to identify those implicated and prosecute them, putting offenders before the courts to “refund our money or proceed to Nsawam Prison.”
The warning lands amid growing public pressure for tougher enforcement and the recovery of funds lost to irregular spending. Recent sittings of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have surfaced several cases of mismanagement across public bodies, including one in which officials of the Ho Municipal Assembly were directed to refund GH¢138,000 over infractions flagged in the Auditor-General’s report.
Mahama said the aim was not only to punish wrongdoing but to rebuild public confidence in how state resources are managed and to ensure funds serve their intended purposes. The administration has repeatedly pledged to fight corruption and tighten fiscal discipline as part of wider efforts to restore trust in public institutions and underpin the economic recovery.
