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Ghana and West Africa's representative on the AU Advisory Board on Corruption, Daniel Batidam has resigned from the Board, somewhat giving credence to how deep corruption is eating into the bedrock of Africa’s development.

Batidam, cited deep seated corruption, lack of accountability among others at the secretariat of the board and at the AU Commission itself as reason for his resignation. He mentioned the degree of bad governance, including the abuse of trusted power, corruption, lack of probity, accountability, transparency, and integrity at the secretariat of the African Union Board and some departments of the AU Commission, while all efforts to seek redress yielded no results.

All African heads of state continuously in their speeches pledge support in fighting corruption ruthlessly but it seems that is just a façade.

It was at least expected that Batidam’s allegation would have called for a probe but unfortunately that did not happen. There seems to be an unwillingness to fight back by the commission. According to Mr. Batidam, who claims to have resigned out of principle after failing to make any headway to correct the ills, put in his resignation letter, dated June 8, 2018.The letter is reported to have reached the office of the AU Chair on June 12 and a reply acceptance letter from the Chair received within 48 hours.

For an autonomous body that was established within the African Union and tasked with the core function of preventing and combating corruption among members of the continental body, one would have ordinarily expected a swift move to probe the allegations further, giving the belief the commission may have failed to take cognizance of the seriousness of the issues.

Corruption remains a major anti-development problem on the continent, with an AU findings in 2002, suggesting the continent to have lost about $ 150 billion annually. A figure marked higher than the aid received by African states from developed countries per year.