Minister-designate for Trade and Industry, Kobina Tahir Hammond has hit back at persons calling into question the competence of the elderly in society when it comes to national leadership.

Addressing Parliament’s Appointment Committee during his vetting on Monday, February 20, 2023, the nominee argued that whereas the youth can have a place in the governance of the country, it cannot be said that the elderly are useless and must therefore be relegated from national leadership.

“My argument is that, you don’t rule a country without the adults. I maintain it, the youth alone cannot run a country. It's not possible. There can be a mixture of the youth… it’s never been my argument that they cannot have a say in the running of the country. I said they should be tamed, they should be temperate in the kind of things that they say and the suggestion that every adult is useless. You look at me, you think I am useless?” the nominee questioned members of the committee.

The Adansi Asokwa MP was recently the subject of public criticism after he questioned the competence of the Ghanaian youth relative to solely leading the country.

K. T. Hammond in September 2022, lashed out at some patrons of the Global Citizens Festival who hooted at President Akufo-Addo when he addressed attendees at the concert.

“Let’s exercise restraint a little. Akufo-Addo is the executive President overseeing all the affairs of the country. When he arrived on the stage, he didn’t say anything untoward. Besides, it wasn’t even a political platform. He was only expressing his satisfaction with the event”, he said.

“We will continue to admonish you the young men and women to be patient. When there’s an issue to be addressed, society always consults the elderly. Not you the young ones, whose heads are like coconuts,” K. T. Hammond who described the action of the Global Citizens Festival patrons as disrespectful added.

But appearing before the Appointment Committee on Monday, February 20, 2023, K. T. Hammond clarified that his statement was not to undermine the youth of the country.

“We’ve been young before, so it’s not for anybody to try and castigate the youth unreasonably. What I have been saying is this, and let’s get it right; the youth have all the reason to say what they want to say. They have the right and the entitlement to participate in the governing of the country. What I said was that there is a limit to how these matters are to be handled.

“There has been this whole business and I if you’d recall, I think the communist revolution or so. What it is was that ‘when we come to government the first thing we will do, all the lawyers we will chain them together and then dump them under the sea, we kill all of them.’ It is in one of the communist manifestos,” he said.

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