The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has told the largest opposition party in Ghana, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to be more responsible in their utterances, especially regarding government appointees.
Henry Nana Boakye, the National Youth Organiser of the NPP, called on the NDC to provide credible alternatives to the NPP’s policies and programmes ahead of the 2020 general elections and stop spewing tribal and ethnocentric comments against the Akufo-Addo administration.
At the NDC’s Moment of Truth press conference on Tuesday, 5 November 2019, the National Communication Officer of the party, Mr Sammy Gyamfi, said President Nana Akufo-Addo has appointed over 50 of his relatives in his administration.
Mr Gyamfi said, for instance, that the entire nuclear family of the President’s Executive Secretary, Nana Asante Bediatuo, is part of the Akufo-Addo government.
The party also named ministers such as Ken Ofori-Atta, Mr Amoako Atta and Mr Samuel Atta Akyea as being some of the immediate family ties of the President who are all occupying key positions in his government.
According to Mr Gyamfi, “After our meticulous investigations into appointments made by President Akufo-Addo since the year 2017, we submit that the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government is the most nepotistic government in the sixty-two-year history of Ghana and we dare say the world”.
“Even Idi Amin Dada – the Butcher of Uganda, Jean-Bedel Bokassa and Mobutu Sese Seko – the looter of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) will envy President Akufo-Addo’s unprecedented brand of nepotism and clannism”.
But responding to these claims at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, the National Youth Organiser of the NPP, Nana Boakye (Nana B) accused the NDC of reducing the 2020 campaign to one of tribal politics.
“What the NDC is doing is clear that they want to play the discredited Ashanti vs Akyem card; Akans vs Non-Akans card. It is a hopeless and irresponsible agenda by an opposition party that is empty of ideas and empty on performance,” he stated.
The NDC, he said, should tell Ghanaians their alternatives for the numerous policies and programmes of the Akufo-Addo government.
“They should tell us their alternative for Free SHS, Planting for Food and Jobs, the payment of the various allowances and others,” he added.
Nana B said: “Let us use this opportunity to ask Ghanaians to ask themselves a simple but very important question, perhaps, the most important question for 2020: What does John Mahama stand for? What does he believe in? What is his vision?”
He said, at least the Ghanaian people know what the President stands for.
“In 2008, he [Nana Akufo-Addo] promised free secondary education. He stuck to it in 2012 and stayed with it in 2016 and has delivered on it in office. He campaigned on Ghana’s industrialisation and adding value to our natural resources. Today, he has set up the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation to add value to Ghana’s one billion tonnes of bauxite. It is this same bauxite that John Mahama signed away to his younger brother, Ibrahim Mahama, one week before NPP took office. President John Mahama gave 80% of our bauxite, valued at least $200 billion. Please, listen carefully, over $200 billion, of our national asset was handed over to one person, who is the younger brother of the President who dashed it to him before leaving office. It took the new government and the Supreme Court, in unanimous decision, to show that what John Mahama did was illegal,” he explained.
