By Charles S. Amponsah | Picture credit: Kweku Bolton
The Assistant Director of Audit and Information Officer at the Ghana Audit Service, Frederick Lokko, has urged journalists to exercise greater care when reporting on figures in the Auditor-General’s reports, warning that misinterpretation of “cash irregularities” can mislead the public about alleged corruption.
Speaking during a training session for journalists in Accra, Mr Lokko said many newsrooms lack the specialised skills to interpret complex audit reports, leading to headlines that suggest money has been misappropriated when the issue may simply be a procedural breach.
“The purpose of this lecture is for you to, as it were, report more accurately. One very important area is the issue of how you report on cash irregularities. Generally, when we say irregularity, we just make a reference to the fact that something has been done contrary to law,” he said.
He explained that not all cash irregularities indicate misappropriation.
“So those ones that you see that we call cash irregularities, it’s not in all cases that they refer to what we call misappropriation. As in, literally speaking, saying that money has been taken by public offices. Are you getting it? So we want to entreat you, before you do your reports, look at the Auditor General’s report.”
Mr Lokko said journalists were taken through the types of reports the Auditor-General submits to Parliament, including performance audits, financial compliance audits, and information systems audits. He stressed the importance of understanding both the findings and the Auditor-General’s recommendations.
“When you read the full contents of a particular issue you are looking at, it gives you the right perspectives,” he said.
He clarified that the Auditor-General does not have prosecutorial powers and that disallowance or surcharge certificates are recommendations, not enforcement tools.
“The Auditor General’s mandate, as we looked at, does not include prosecutorial powers… its enforceability lies outside of the mandate of the Auditor General,” he said.
Mr Lokko cautioned against misleading headlines on aggregate figures.
“Normally you pick up a headline like, total cash irregularities of $25 billion or $22 billion. And when this goes out, it sends a wrong perception. So the ordinary Ghanaian in the streets feels that this amount of money public offices have pocketed or bookied,” he said.
He explained that some irregularities simply result from transactions processed outside the required GIFMIS system and do not necessarily mean funds have been stolen. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the money has gone into somebody’s pocket. But then it falls within the category of cash irregularity. Are you getting it?”
The audit officer also emphasised the importance of performance audits, which assess whether public funds are used economically, efficiently, and effectively, often focusing on societal impact rather than missing money.
“Sometimes the people of Ghana… their interest lies in maybe failure by a contractor to construct, let’s assume, a classroom block well… when they go to the classroom and it rains and there are holes in the roofing, they got a problem with that one,” he said.
Mr Lokko encouraged reporters to highlight these practical consequences in their reporting. “If you do your reports and you are not touching on these bits that due to so-and-so issue of the contractor is leading to leakages… it means a lot to them than how much was used to construct it,” he said.
On the CitizensEye App, he said the platform allows citizens to report national concerns directly to the Audit Service.
“That is an app used by the service and it’s there for everyone to download. And you can basically, just as a summary, report any issue of national concern through it… and it comes to the service and that also influences some of the others that we do in terms of areas that we look at,” he said.
“We know you are doing a lot, but you look at it in this perspective, and then you report accordingly,” Mr Lokko concluded.
