You are here: HomeOpinionsArticles2012 03 10Article 231888

Opinions of Saturday, 10 March 2012

Columnist: Boateng, Chris Gyamfi

Akuffo Addo's Shameful Lies & Chapter 5 of NPP's 2000 Manifesto

It’s quite amusing that the defeated 2008 NPP presidential candidate William Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo deems it convenient to continue with UP/NPP campaign of naked lies and deceptions. The man, unabashedly has taken his lies international by stating in a BBC live interview that he would embark on a free senior high school education in the unlikely event he is elected president of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana.
It is well noted that that interviewed proved a disaster for this disgruntled NPP candidate as he was corned and found wanting as he could not explicitly indicate as to how he would fund his education policy he is touting all over.
Ironically, while Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo claims to believing in Ghana, he chose a foreign country to highlight his so-called free education policy but as he was exposed and corned like a caged rat, the presidential wannabe stated that he would unfold his funding strategy to Ghanaians back in Ghana. Haha, so why didn’t he divulge his plan in Ghana in the first place but chose the UK, instead? Now you see how contradicting Akuffo Addo could be all because of desperation?
Reminiscent of NPP’s precambrian campaign of lies and deceptions as manifested by Akuffo Addo’s current postures, Chapter 5 of their 2000 manifesto exposes how hollow this party is and the insults they’ve heaped on Ghanaians taking the good people of the country for granted.
NPP unequivocally states in that chapter that they would turn all slums in Ghana to apartment complexes in the country. The same piece of paper states that they would turn all “chop bars” in Ghana to first class restaurants; they also didn’t mince words stating in that chapter that all Ghanaians would be employed if voted into office in 2000.
Ladies and gentlemen reading me, the above promises are categorically and vividly enshrined in chapter 5 of NPP’s 2000 manifesto which they chose to render useless as they couldn’t accomplish a single one of them.
In comparing the NDC and NPP records of housing civil servants in Ghana, one can point to SNNIT (sp?) Flats dotted in most of the regional capitals of the country –Ghana and I know of one ex-NPP MP Kwadwo Adjei Darko living in one of them at Sunyani when he was a tutor at SUSEC; there was also these two staunch NPP journalists at Sunyani living there, too. The NDC can boast of similar SNNIT (sp) Flats at Dansoman, Sakumono, Adenta and Taifa housing civil servants.
Can we say same about the NPP? Were they able to put up a single edifice to house civil servants in the country? Interestingly, an unlettered NPP apologist was arguing that they have “uncompleted affordable housing” in Ghana; uncompleted! And we know the fate of those uncompleted buildings and their intended beneficiaries. Even at their foundation levels, Aliu Mahama, Akumfi Ameyaw, JA Kofi Diawuo Kuffuor, Theresa Kuffuor, Amma Kuffuor, Serwaa and many NPP followers were allotted these yet to be completed buildings instead of going to their intended beneficiaries – civil servants. Isn’t this shameful? How many SNNIT (sp) Flats went to JJ Rawlings or Mills and their respective families and their followers?
Besides sharing the uncompleted affordable houses among NPP leaders, their family members, and friends, that party can also boast of turning a place in Accra to a magnificent and imposing building –Hotel Waa Waa; that was how NPP turned “slums to apartment complexes” as promised in the chapter five of their 2000 manifesto.
They also promised turning “Agya Koo Manu’s Barima Nkwan Chop Bar” to first class restaurant but the question is where is it? Are the “chop bars” at the Kaneshie-Takoradi Station turned to first class restaurants? Was Maame Akoley’s “chop bar” turned to a first class restaurant? How about “At All’s” and many “Chop Bars” littered by the roadsides, inner-cities and villages in the country? Did the NPP turn them to first class restaurants instead of them patronizing and eating and drinking quality foreign wines in first class, nice and plush restaurants the world over during their incessant travels?
The least talk about hollow promises of offering jobs to all Ghanaians, the better; for we know that the youth whose hopes were raised were mercilessly beating up when they marched to the ministries to ask for jobs that were promised them by JA Kofi Diawuo Kuffuor and his brigand of liars. Indeed, the unemployed youth who trooped to Accra between 2001 and 2008 doubled as evidenced by the swelling sea of young men and women selling dog chains, chewing sticks, matches, apples, car dusters and what have you. On the flip side, the NPP managed to offer jobs to their cronies and a bankrupted Kuffuor’s son who was railroaded by one of his business partners leading to a protracted case still pending at the courts.
It is clear from the above that Akuffo Addo and his NPP’s glittering promises turning Ghana to heavens are tenuous and therefore untenable; they must therefore stop insulting the intelligence of Ghanaians and engage in real, achievable solutions to the country’s problems instead of these inferior tactics calculated to hoodwink Ghanaians to voting for them. I call on the NDC’s communication to grab this manifesto and highlight on the inherent lies and deceptions in them to discerning Ghanaians.

I am Koo Boateng and I approve of the above message I’ve written.
Chris Gyamfi Boteng, Northeast Philadelphia, USA.