President John Dramani Mahama, in an attempt to shrug off some corruption allegations leveled against him, yesterday challenged all his accusers to meet him in court with proof.

According to him, he was not corrupt and had not engaged in any wrongdoing; hence he was prepared to meet anybody anywhere to defend himself.

Addressing hundreds of NDC supporters at the party’s manifesto launch, yesterday at Ho, Mr Mahama said, “I am prepared as president of this country to appear before anybody, any institution to be investigated for corruption.”

The opposition NPP had a few days ago alleged that President Mahama did not deserve the mandate of Ghanaians because he was indecisive and presided over corruption.

They have also accused him of abuse of power in many other ways to allow dubious deals against the state.

Former President Rawlings has also called on Ghanaians to pray for President Mahama, saying “he needs help” to fight the corruption in his government.

He said Mahama needed strength and courage from God to dispel “the old evil dwarfs” in his administration.

The president has however asked the NPP to be bold and responsible and “go to the appropriate institutions and have those allegations investigated and punished”.

He said, “When serious political leaders and political parties hold press conferences and make unsubstantiated allegations, I think that is a very irresponsible behaviour.

“If you are a responsible political leader or political party, if you think somebody has indulged in corruption, there are appropriate institutions that you can go to and have those allegations investigated and punished.”

President Mahama stated, “So I throw a challenge to those parties and those leaders of political parties that are making those unsubstantiated allegations that if they truly believe that I have been involved in corruption, they should go to the appropriate institutions, make a report, I’ll appear there and I will defend myself.”

Free SHS Is Good

The president, who used over 80 percent of his time on education, finally conceded that free education was good and necessary for every child in the country.

According to him, there was no equity in the current educational system of the country due to inadequate access to school by children across the country.

Hence, the priority of an NDC government would be to ensure equity by making the schools available and accessible before making education free.

Mr. Mahama, in an attempt to rubbish the free SHS policy of the NPP, also noted that “the vision of free senior high school does not belong” to any particular individual or party but “belongs to all the people of Ghana”.

He stressed, “The issue of free SHS should not be debated at all” because it could only hold if there was additional resource.” President Mahama however proposed that the debate should be about who had the track record in improving education.

He claimed that apart from the Nkrumah regime, it was only the first and second regimes of the NDC that had made tremendous contribution to the country’s education.

Some of the party’s achievements in that respect are the University of Education, Winneba, University of Development Studies, Tamale, University of Mines (UMaT), Tarkwa and recently the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ho and the University of Natural Resources in Brong Ahafo.