Attacks on Nana Addo cannot cover up NDC’s failures-NPP

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Upper West Region has expressed disappointment at the deliberate and constant criminalisation of its leader Nana Akufo-Addo, by some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

A press statement issued by the Communication team of the party at a press conference in Wa on Monday and signed by Mr. Umar Nuhu, a member, noted that some NDC members had through character assassinations and personal attack, vilified the NPP leader.

It said despite several calls from eminent Ghanaians including former President John Jerry Rawlings that the electioneering campaign be conducted, devoid of insults, there were still some top personalities within the NDC who were still bent on name callings and character defamation.

“Such spiteful behaviour by the NDC towards Nana Akufo-Addo must stop because the practice would not either create employment or put food on the table of ordinary Ghanaians; rather it has the potential of tensions during the elections.”

“Trying to use the NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo as a cover up for their failures did not matter to most ordinary Ghanaians,” pointing out that what matters to the people “are the catalogues of failures in President John Atta Mills’ social interventions, policies and programmes.”

The statement said “For instance, the successes churned out in the President’s Mills’ state of the nation’s address did not reflect the situation on the ground and should be treated with contempt and as a mere political propaganda to throw dust into the eyes of the good people of Ghana.”

The team noted that the Free School Uniform and Free Exercise Books Programmes of the government had been poorly implemented and that the idea of one Laptop Computer for each school going child, muted by the late Kwadwo Baah Wiredu had been changed to 24 laptops per every 200 students, as being done under the NDC.

On inflation, the group said during President John Kufuor’s administration, the NPP was able to reduce the inflation rate from 48.5 percent to 23 percent within its first term in office while the NDC under President Mills’ administration had been able to reduce inflation from 18 per cent to eight percent within the same period.

By this calculation, the NPP had been able to reduce inflation rate by 25 per cent as against 10 per cent for the NDC within the same period.

With regards to the Rural Electrification Programme, the communication team said it was the NPP that contracted a loan of 350 million US dollars to implement the project and that the NDC must learn to give credit to the NPP in that regard.

The group said some of the development projects in the region such as the Babile, Kaleo, Daffiama, Nandom and Gwollu wind-powered electricity and the Charia small town water supplies, as well as the Sissala West District Assembly block, which were completed in the NPP era were now being claimed by the NDC.

It noted that the NDC’s priorities and concerns were not about fixing the ailing economy rather “it had preoccupied itself to unjustifiably run down the NPP and drag the name of Nana Akufo-Addo in the mud so that those who were gullible would see the NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo as such and rejected them in 2012 elections.”

According to the group the NDC had failed Ghanaians on its promises of “one time premium” on the National Health Insurance, the promise to eradicate cocaine trade, fighting corruption and reducing fuel prices drastically.

“It had also failed to resource the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) adequately, caused distortions in workers salaries, failed to build the Wa Regional Hospital, contributed to the massive failures of students at Basic Education Certificate Examinations, and the abortive promise to building vocational schools in all districts as well as allocating 40 percent of government appointment to women.”

The statement concluded that in the face of all these challenges and failures, the NDC had always blamed NPP for all its woes and cautioned that “the NPP would as from now on go all out if the NDC continued to damage Nana Akufo-Addo’s image and the vilification of the NPP.”