“I am promising you that within 18 months of a new government of the NPP, under my leadership, the face of our country, Ghana, is going to change. We are going to get out of stagnation and backwardness, and move our country onto the path of progress and prosperity. We can do it. We, the Ghanaian people, have the capacity to change the circumstances of our lives.”
These were the words of the 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the Jubilee Park in Tamale, when he addressed a mammoth gathering at the NPP’s Northern Regional Rally.
This ‘new Ghana’, according to Nana Akufo-Addo, will be “a Ghana with opportunities for all, and where everybody is taken care off. We will have a society that is caring and compassionate and expresses solidarity. Nobody is going to be left behind. We are all going to march together, hands linked together, to that great future that beckons us, here in Ghana.”
Having announced a programme of for the rapid industrialization of the Ghanaian economy; ‘1-District-1-Factory’ policy; ‘1-Village-1-Dam’ policy; the diversification of the country’s agriculture; the effective implementation of the Free SHS policy; and the setting up of an Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP), where every constituency will receive the cedi equivalent of $1 million a year to tackle developmental issues, Nana Akufo-Addo has assured Ghanaians that these policies, which will be implemented to the latter, will improve the standard of living of the Ghanaian.
Thus, a vote for Akufo-Addo in the December polls, he said, will mean that Ghanaians would have elected a President who will treat all citizens with the utmost respect, and one who will also jealously guard the public purse for the improvement of their livelihoods.
A Ghana without tribalism
The ‘new Ghana’, under an Akufo-Addo led NPP government, the NPP flagbearer indicated will be one that will not discriminate against any tribe, ethnic or religious grouping in the country.
Nana Akufo-Addo condemned, again, the politics of tribalism and ethnicity being waged continuously by President John Mahama in his campaign in the North, with 15 days to the conduct of the December 7 elections.
He stated that all of his adult life has been spent fighting for the progress of the Ghanaian people, without recourse to ethnicity, colour or tribe.
“I fought Acheampong’s Union Government. Acheampong was an Ashanti, but it didn’t make any difference to me. I thought the Union Government was a bad idea and I opposed it. I opposed PNDC under Rawlings, who is Ewe, because I thought military government is not good for Ghana. I am tribal blind, I am colour blind. It is Ghana which is my interest,” he added.
The NPP flagbearer assured the gathering that the ‘new Ghana’ under his leadership will be one of a “united Ghana, where all the people of Ghana will be together as one indissoluble link. We don’t want a situation where tribe is set tribe, North is set against South. That is the politics of yesterday. That is the politics of reaction.
“We are moving forward into a new destiny, a destiny which has a united Ghana being able to afford a good standard of living for all Ghanaians. We are going to build a new civilization, a new Ghanaian civilization which is going to be the light of Africa and the wonder of the world.
“We, here in Ghana, are capable of it. Our destiny, the destiny of the Black Star, beckons us, as we try to forge a new future of progress and prosperity for our people,” he concluded.
