The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) is wondering why Nana Akufo-Addo is not trumpeting his free SHS mantra going into the 2016 polls.

According to the PPP, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) must stick to that campaign message if it was feasible.

“In our estimation, that free SHS slogan was at best political rhetoric by Nana Akufo-Addo to make a political statement in the 2012 election year,” the PPP said in a statement.

Below is the full statement:

....So Akufo-Addo, what happened to Free SHS?
It is very interesting how political seasons throw up all manner of instant change managers.

Many NPP zealots are as usual, beside themselves with joy because their Presidential candidate Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo has promised to deliver one factory in each of the 216 districts of the country, if he is elected President of Ghana.

The euphoria in that party is akin to Nana Akufo-Addo’s offer of providing free education to every Ghanaian at the Senior High School (SHS) level in the run-up to the 2012 elections. In that state of excitement, market women wore Senior High School Uniforms to parade markets and streets to endorse Nana Addo’s free SHS which in their estimation will curtail their burden on school fees.

Akufo-Addo’s dearth at the presidency in 2012 momentarily shut the door on the so-called free SHS propaganda show-piece. It is now close to four years, and the loudness with which Akufo-Addo trumpeted the free SHS idea has become dead silence as if there is nothing really wrong with our educational system.

In our estimation that free SHS slogan was at best political rhetoric by Nana Akufo-Addo to make a political statement in the 2012 election year. Indeed we of the PPP knew how untenable the Nana Akufo-Addo proposition was and therefore offered our candid opinion on how free SHS cannot flourish under an educational environment, which Primary and Junior High School levels were and are still totally rotten. How can a child benefit from free SHS if they cannot afford JHS education?

It is another election year and Nana Akufo-Addo is at what he knows best; promising heaven, when indeed his own disposition and track-record do not in any way measure up to the grandiose dream of offering nationwide factories as President.

Apart from working in the “office of I want to be President”, what else can Akufo-Addo offer in concrete terms to support such a claim? Indeed if we are looking for someone with demonstrable talents to lead Ghana from her unemployment quagmire, then certainly that cannot be Nana Akufo-Addo.
We agree everyone and his God-given talents and none can dispute Akufo-Addo’s pedigree in law; just as someone else may pride himself as a Communications expert of some sort. We are not the least suggesting that a lawyer cannot lead this country. Far from that!

But if we all agree that one issue that is bugging us as a nation is job creation, then we need not look beyond Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, the man who has within a spate of eight years created over five thousand jobs in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Liberia, Burkina Faso, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

No one seems to be asking Nana Akufo-Addo how he intends creating these jobs. Perhaps like his carbon copy tactics where he has virtually usurped every Nduom idea like the Separation of the Attorney General’s Department from the Ministry of Justice and election of MMDCEs, Akufo-Addo is waiting to hear Dr Nduom’s take on job creation, and presto, he will make it his own.

If that is the case, Nana Addo should listen to the generous Nduom: “I will use the State and its purchasing power to facilitate for the private sector to invest and set up factories”.

---Signed---
Paa Kow Ackon
Director of Communication