[ 2017-01-31 ]

President Akufo-Addo confirms he can’t sleep
...Says challenges ahead daunting

Less than a month after The aL-hAJJ reported of
President Akufo-Addo having sleepless nights over
how to redeem his numerous mouthwatering campaign
promises to avoid incurring the wrath of
‘impatient’ Ghanaians, the President has been
hinting of the daunting task ahead of him.

Without openly admitting that he has been planning
on how to convince Ghanaians that some of his
promises may not be fulfilled, President
Akufo-Addo has been lamenting how the erstwhile
Mahama administration left behind a “poor
economy.”

Speaking at a press conference to announce his
ministerial nominees for the ten regions, the
President was blunt in admitting that things are
not rosy as he would have wished to bring the kind
of transformation he promised, assuring that
“…but I’m a firm believer in the statement
that when times are tough, the tough get
going.”

Though the president’s Senior Minister, Yaw
Osafo Marfo and Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta
have attested to strong economic fundamentals,
President Akufo Addo said “we have inherited an
economy in poor shape and I suspect from what
I’m hearing, the evidence that is coming to me
that it is in even poorer shape than we
anticipated.”

Sounding confident when he appeared before the
appointment committee, Mr Ken Ofori Atta assured
that: “the country may seem broke but actually
not broken and that there are ways in which the
infrastructure base could be improved.”

The aL-hAJJ recently reported that President
Akufo-Addo have been fretting over how to fulfill
his lofty promises and his government’s
relationship with the International Monetary Fund,
Millennium Challenge Agency and the People’s
Republic of China after threatening to review
agreements entered into with them by the immediate
past Mahama government.

Sources at the seat of government confirmed to
this paper that the President has since taking
office been a worried man. “Nana has been
brooding over how to fulfill his numerous
promises, particularly those with timelines”,
the source revealed.

President Akufo Addo, the source further
explained, “knows it will be very difficult if
not near impossible to fulfill most of the
promises he made during the campaign and giving
how Ghanaians bought into these promises to vote
for us, he has been ‘thinking’ between how
difficult fulfilling them could be and/or, to come
clean, be frank with Ghanaians… telling them the
bitter truth.”

Among some of the promises said to be giving the
President nightmares include full implementation
of the free Senior High School concept, One
district, One factory, One village, One dam, One
district, One million dollars for each
Constotuency, reduction of VAT from 17.5% to 3%
for SMEs, reduction of corporate tax from 25% to
12.5%, reduction in utility bills and fuel.

Others are the restoration of trainee nurses and
teacher allowances, scrapping of some taxes, free
import duties on raw materials, payment of
deposits to DKM and other financial institution
customers whose monies were locked up, new harbors
at James Town and Keta, railway services from
Takoradi-Kumasi to Paga and industrial parks for
all ten regions.

The rest include, Stadia in Brong Ahafo, Eastern
region, Upper East and West, and Volta regions,
police hospitals at Bolatanga and Sunyani, two new
police training schools, increase compulsory
retirement in the Ghana Armed Forces from 25 years
to 30 years among other promises.

Another source disclosed to this paper that giving
the present state of the economy, the president
and his economic management team believe the best
way to water down the expectations of Ghanaians is
“to prepare their minds by telling them the
economy is in a mess and therefore some of the
pledges may have to be shelved for the time
being.”

In order to achieve this crafty target, the
President only recently, while painting a gloomy
picture of the economy, had this to say “this is
the time that we have to show leadership and
commitment to our nation. I continue to be an
unrepentant optimist.”

He added that “we are a special people and we
have a special destiny and I’m going to do
everything within my bones to make sure that that
destiny is realized in the years ahead of us.”

Adopting similar strategy, Vice President Mahamudu
Bawumia at a durbar of Zongo chiefs and Imams at
Fadama in Accra organized by the Chief Imam to
mark the birthday of Holy Prophet Mohammed, also
said the NPP government has inherited a “very
difficult” economy from the NDC administration.

“…We said that when by the grace of Allah we
get into government, we will undertake a number of
policies and by the grace of God we have gotten
into government, we have looked at the economic
situation, it is not an easy one, it is a very
difficult one but by the grace of Allah we intend
to keep all the promises that we made to the
people of Ghana.

“You have already seen that we mean business; we
are going to deal with the economic challenges,
after all, that is what we were elected to do,”
Dr. Bawumia noted.

Source - Al-hajj

... go Back