Presidential Staffer Dr Clement Apaak has criticised political science lecturer Dr Richard Amoako Baah for suggesting that at least 60% of government appointments are filled by northerners.

“Right now as I’m talking, the government positions in this country, key positions, I’ll bet more than 60 per cent is filled by northerners. I’m not saying that is good, that is not good at all.

“But if he [Mr Mahama] feels comfortable with this person as an adviser, why should he go and go and get a total stranger he doesn’t know,” Dr Amoako Baah told Ekow Mensah-Shalders on Class91.3fm’s Executive Breakfast Show on Monday April 11.

According to him, though politics of patronage was not a good thing, the situation in Ghana, where presidents appoint their kith and kin into key positions, had become popular because such people may have played key roles in the electoral victory of the party.

In response to Dr Amoako Baah’s assertion, Dr Apaak, who is a northerner wrote on Facebook that: “Alert: Dr. Amoaku Baah is a disgrace to academia and a shameless ethic supremacists. How can an academic worth his or her salt claim that 60% of people appointed by JM are northerners.

"First of all it’s not true based on figures. Secondly, the north is a geographic designation. The three regions comprising the north have multiple ethonoliguistic groups. A Frara is not the same as a Dagomba, a Kusasi is not the same as a Wala. Yet a man who claims to know it all deliberately tries to impugn the reputation of JM with such lies, kai, I cannot but expose him!”