Public Service Must Not Become a Personal Favour

Ghana’s latest bribery figures reveal more than an exchange of money. They expose a public-service culture in which citizens increasingly feel that access, speed and basic assistance depend on whom they know or what they can offer.

A citizen walks into a public institution with the required documents, the prescribed fee and a reasonable expectation that the state will serve them.

In principle, that should be enough.

Too often, however, the citizen soon discovers that completing the official procedure is only the beginning.

A file may not move until someone intervenes. A straightforward request may suddenly become complicated. An officer may ask whether the matter is urgent, not necessarily to understand the citizen’s circumstances, but to determine what that urgency may be worth.

This is the deeper concern raised by the latest findings on bribery in Ghana’s public institutions.

The Ghana Statistical Service reported that the proportion of people who paid bribes while accessing public services increased from 14.3 per cent in the first half of 2025 to 18 per cent in the second half of the year.

Among people who encountered bribery, the proportion who said an unofficial payment had been requested by a public official also increased considerably.

These figures require more than another round of public condemnation.

They should force Ghana to confront a culture that has quietly transformed some public services into personal favours.

The problem is not limited to money changing hands.

It is also found in the assumptions surrounding public service: that citizens must know someone before their requests receive attention; that an official deserves an additional reward for performing a duty already funded by the public; and that delays can be created or sustained until the citizen offers an incentive.

This culture damages the relationship between the state and the people it exists to serve.

When public duty becomes private assistance

A public official who processes a lawful application is not doing the applicant a personal favour.

The officer is performing a public duty.

That distinction matters because corruption often begins when institutional responsibility is personalised.

Instead of seeing a service as something citizens are entitled to receive under established rules, officials and applicants begin to treat it as assistance granted through individual goodwill.

The language surrounding such transactions makes the problem easier to tolerate.

An unofficial payment may be described as appreciation, transport, lunch or something small. These expressions make the transaction sound harmless, courteous and culturally acceptable.

But changing the language does not change the substance.

Where money, gifts or personal connections influence the speed, quality or availability of a public service, equal access has been compromised.

The danger becomes greater when such practices are no longer considered unusual.

A society does not need to formally approve corruption for corruption to become institutionalised. It only needs enough people to accept that this is how things work.

When citizens begin to prepare unofficial payments before visiting a public office, the transaction is no longer an isolated ethical failure.

It has become part of the expected cost of dealing with the state.

A system that rewards connections

The culture of favour creates an informal hierarchy of citizenship.

There are citizens whose applications move because they know a senior official. There are those who can call a political figure, a director, a friend or a relative inside the institution.

There are also those who can pay to accelerate the process.

Then there are citizens who have nothing except the correct documents and the expectation that the rules will be followed.

They are often the ones who wait the longest.

This is how a public institution can operate two systems from the same office: one based on rules and another based on access.

The first demands patience.

The second requires influence.

Such a system is fundamentally unfair because public services are not designed only for people with money or connections. They are collectively funded and must be delivered according to transparent procedures.

When personal networks determine who receives attention, citizenship itself begins to lose meaning.

People stop trusting institutions and begin searching for individuals who can help them navigate those institutions.

The result is a country of contacts rather than a country of functioning systems.

The poor pay the highest price

Unofficial payments do not affect everyone equally.

For a wealthy applicant, an additional payment may be irritating but affordable. For a low-income citizen, the same demand may determine whether a birth certificate is obtained, a business is registered, a permit is processed or an essential service is accessed.

Bribery therefore creates more than an ethical problem.

It creates an economic barrier.

It imposes an unofficial tax on people who are already funding the public service through taxes, levies and statutory fees.

It also punishes citizens who attempt to act honestly.

Those who refuse to pay may face delays while others are moved ahead. Over time, honesty begins to appear impractical, while payment and influence are rewarded as efficiency.

No society can build a strong culture of integrity under such conditions.

When appreciation becomes an expectation

Earlier findings from the Ghana Statistical Service also raised concerns about voluntary or appreciation payments made to public officials.

This is an important part of the national conversation.

Not every gift offered after a service is necessarily intended to influence an official act. Ghanaian culture values gratitude and generosity.

Within public institutions, however, the line must be carefully protected.

A payment described as appreciation can still create expectations. It can encourage officials to provide better treatment to citizens who give something and less attention to those who do not.

It can gradually establish an unofficial price for services that are supposed to be provided impartially.

Once that expectation develops, the payment is no longer truly voluntary.

The next citizen may feel compelled to give because the previous citizen did.

Public institutions must therefore protect officials and citizens by establishing and enforcing clear rules on gifts, unofficial payments and conflicts of interest.

Honest public servants also suffer

It would be unfair to describe every public or civil servant as corrupt.

Thousands of public officials perform difficult work with professionalism, often under conditions of inadequate staffing, weak infrastructure, delayed resources and intense public pressure.

They, too, are harmed by bribery.

When corruption becomes associated with an institution, honest workers lose public trust alongside dishonest ones.

Citizens enter offices assuming that every delay is deliberate and every official is waiting for an inducement.

This damages morale and weakens the dignity of public service.

The response must therefore distinguish between condemning public servants as a group and confronting the systems and individuals that enable corruption.

Ghana needs public officials who are adequately paid, properly equipped, well supervised and protected when they resist improper instructions.

The country also needs consequences for officials who deliberately create inconvenience, sell access or convert public authority into private income.

Both principles can and must be defended at the same time.

Digitisation alone will not solve the problem

Ghana has increasingly turned to digital platforms to reduce human discretion in public transactions.

This is necessary, but technology should not be mistaken for reform by itself.

A digital process can still reproduce the weaknesses of a manual one.

Applications may remain unexplained, delayed or inaccessible. Citizens may still require an intermediary to understand the platform or get their cases reviewed.

New gatekeepers may emerge around passwords, approvals, verification systems and technical support.

The objective should not merely be to move bureaucracy online.

It should be to make public services predictable.

Every institution should publish its official fees, required documents, processing stages and expected completion times.

Citizens should be able to track applications and receive clear reasons for delays, queries or rejection.

The less uncertainty a process contains, the less opportunity there is for someone to sell certainty.

Reporting must lead to consequences

Citizens are frequently encouraged to report bribery, but reporting systems will remain ineffective unless people believe action will follow.

A person who reports an official may fear retaliation, further delays or exposure of their identity.

Others may conclude that the time and effort involved will produce no meaningful result.

Institutions must therefore create secure and accessible reporting channels, protect complainants and publish anonymised information about investigations and sanctions.

Consequences must be visible.

When misconduct disappears into internal committees and confidential correspondence, public confidence is not restored.

Accountability must be fair, evidence-based and consistent, but it must also be seen to work.

Managers of public institutions should also be held responsible for recurring patterns of misconduct within their offices.

If repeated complaints emerge from the same unit, the problem should not be treated only as the behaviour of isolated individuals.

It may point to a failure of supervision, process design or institutional leadership.

Citizens must also reject the culture

Government cannot address this problem alone.

Citizens contribute to the culture when they offer money to jump queues, accelerate applications or obtain treatment unavailable to others.

A person may complain about corruption in principle while willingly participating in it when it provides a personal advantage.

That contradiction must be confronted.

Offering an unofficial payment to secure preferential treatment is not resourcefulness.

It is participation in a system that will eventually disadvantage someone with fewer resources or weaker connections.

Citizens should not be made to feel ungrateful for leaving a public office without providing an additional reward.

An official who performs a lawful duty has not granted a personal favour.

The citizen has received a public service.

That understanding must become normal again.

Restoring the meaning of public service

Bribery statistics are not merely numbers about money.

They measure how citizens experience the state.

Every unnecessary delay, unofficial payment and demand for personal intervention tells the citizen that institutions cannot be trusted to work on the strength of rules alone.

That lesson has consequences far beyond the office where the transaction occurs.

It influences how people view taxation, elections, law enforcement and government itself.

A citizen who must pay privately for a public service may reasonably ask what citizenship and taxation are meant to provide.

Ghana cannot build credible institutions while official services depend on unofficial arrangements.

The answer lies in reducing discretion, simplifying procedures, publishing clear service standards, protecting whistleblowers, sanctioning misconduct and recognising honest officials.

But it must also begin with a basic change in national thinking.

Public service is not generosity.

Access is not a privilege granted by an official.

Citizens should not need money, influence or personal connections to persuade the state to perform its ordinary duties.

The service is not a favour.

It is the obligation of the institution and the right of the citizen.