Dr Tony Aidoo, a staunch member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has described the 40-year national development plan for Ghana as nonsensical.

Responding to a question on Accra-based Starr FM on Tuesday, 20 November 2018 about comments made by President Nana Akufo-Addo in the early part of 2018 concerning the need to create a database for the various sectors in the country’s economy, the former Ambassador to the Netherlands said: “Data is everything, my friend; it is not only for births and deaths, and not only for electoral register, it is not only for monitoring and evaluation, it is also for planning.

“You need data to plan; you look at a community: how many toilets do they have? Potable water availability, how much can we spend to provide those items? What about the neighbourhood community? … All those are matters of data. You don’t plan without data; the so-called 40-year plan that was developed under the Mahama administration was to me, nonsense. How do you plan without data?”

“You don’t have the adequate staff at the local level of the planning authority, which is the district assembly to collect and give you the data. At the sectoral level, no data is available because people are reluctant to release the data and you said you have done a plan”, he wondered.

The former Senior Presidential Aide and Head of Policy Evaluation and Oversight Unit of the Office of the President from 2009 to 2013, said in his opinion: “A plan is one that is monetised and quantified, without these two elements, there is no plan”.