I’m not a member of NPP – Amoako Baah

A known critic of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Richard Amoako Baah, has said he is not a member of Ghana’s biggest opposition party – NPP.

“No, I am not a member, contrary to what some people want to say, but there’s nothing wrong [with] being a member,” the political science lecturer told Ekow Mensah-Shalders on the Executive Breakfast Show on Class91.3fm on Monday April 11, when asked if he belonged to the New Patriotic Party.

“I may become a member, but right now I’m not a member,” he emphasised.

According to him, he met and advised both late President John Mills and his Vice President John Mahama, in the lead up to the 2012 elections, about certain policies that he thought would drive the elections at the time, especially education.

“I have tried, on so many occasions, to help, especially when President Mills was alive. I talked to him and then Vice President Mahama, I talked to him, met him in his office, went to his house several times. Yes, but I mean it didn’t work, they don’t listen and it got worse …that was before the elections and I remember telling them education was going to be key in this election. This was 2012 and education became the key.

“I wrote an education policy for them, they still have it. But it’s almost as if they go and just pick bits of it; instead of the comprehensive programme, they pick bits of it. For example this cancellation of teacher allowances, it’s in my report, because the teacher allowance was being supported by – I think what – the Netherlands and so you are limited as to how many students you can admit based on how much money they are giving you, and, so, I said: ‘OK get rid of it’. That means you can take as many students as you want but not just rid of it, improve teachers’ salaries. If you improve it, it makes it attractive…but that’s not what they did, they just cancelled it,” he explained.

He said since there were two main parties in the country, if one of them was not delivering while in office, he had no option than to support the other.