My support for Bawumia is because of his ingenuity – Ekow Vincent Assafuah Esq

Member of Parliament for Old Tafo, Ekow Vincent Assafuah Esq, has said that Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s ingenuity makes him the best candidate to lead the New Patriotic Party in the 2024 elections.

He says that after the New Patriotic Party took over the government in 2017, the government had the arduous task of implementing its flagship program, Free Senior High School policy.

Ekow Vincent Asaafuah said it took the ingenuity of the Vice President to get all the individual beneficiaries of the policy captured into the budget.

“In 2017, you’ll remember that I worked with the Ministry of Education, one of the agencies that had to ensure the implementation of the flagship program, free senior high school education. The big question was, where were we supposed to get the money to do that?"

"I remember that at the time when we did the needs assessment and all the analysis, we realized that there were about 100,000 people who were not able to go to school every year because of poverty. There were an additional 250,000 people, depending on the yearly numbers, who would also be in school"

"The government had to find a way to capture all these people in the budget. That was how I realized the ingenuity and intelligence of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. To be able to capture all these people in the budget, yet we will not be affected. To be able to pay for teacher training allowances, capture them in the budget, and yet we will not be affected. To be able to pay for all the arrears that we came to meet from the erstwhile government, yet we were not affected", he said.

When asked about the arrears the Akufo-Addo government had to pay, he said, “NDC told us that they had started progressive free senior high school education where they started with just the day students. They were supposed to pay about GhC 450 for every student who was a day student at the time. Not even a cedi was paid with regards to the free senior high school education that they were implementing, so these were the arrears that we came to meet. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia who was head of the economic management team, made sure that all these things were captured without the state being affected".

He continued, “In the times that we find ourselves, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has shown that indeed he can do it when you give him the opportunity because in 2016, the economic fundamentals that we inherited from the erstwhile government were transformed into better economic fundamentals by 2018, and the numbers are clear.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and four others are contesting to lead the NPP in the 2024 election. The political party is hoping to break the eight and make history by winning the election in 2024.