The vice presidential candidate of the NPP Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has described President John Mahama as a leader who is “out of touch” with his followers following certain campaign assertions he made during his ‘Accounting to the People’ tour.

“For us, this will be a landmark election and in our point of view, the future is really at stake. In the last few years we have seen a major decline in economic growth, when we found oil and due to the oil discovery, GDP growth hit 15%. Today growth has slumped to 3.5%. Behind these numbers is an even more worrying development because in a country like Ghana, you expect to see Agriculture doing well at the very least.

“However, Agriculture is almost collapsing. Agric which should be the backbone of the economy is growing at 0.04% as at 2015. Manufacturing growth has also been in the negative for the last 3 years – negative 0.5% in 2013, negative 0.8% in 2014 and negative 2% in 2015. So Agric is collapsing and manufacturing is in the negative and yet our President wants to tell us that our economy is resilient.

“Now I don’t understand what resilient means in this context when you look at all the indicators. How can unemployment be increasing, growth be declining, interest rates be high and rising, your debt levels be unsustainable, your health services are deteriorating, you cannot pay teacher training allowances, you cannot pay nursing training allowances, you cannot pay contractors, businesses are collapsing, utility prices are sky rocketing and yet you are claiming that the economy is resilient? This President is clearly out of touch,” the former deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana said.

He has therefore called on Ghanaians in the Diaspora and all Ghanaians to support and work for change as a matter of patriotic duty and not one of partisanship considerations.

Dr. Bawumia urged all Ghanaians who wanted to genuinely see Ghana doing better than it is currently doing, and a Ghana that meets the aspirations of its people and particularly its youth, to support Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP, since the current NDC administration has proved beyond every doubt that it cannot build the Ghana we all dream of, despite the enormous resources and opportunities it has had in the last eight years.

Dr. Bawumia made these comments at a Ghanaian townhall event organized in Houston, Texas, by the NPP USA Branch.

Speaking at the event, Dr. Bawumia outlined the current distress the country’s economy was facing and why it was imperative for Ghanaians to seek change in the upcoming November 7 election.

Dr. Bawumia also mentioned the steep fall of the cedi, which was now hovering around 4 cedis to a dollar, after depreciating from GHC1.2 to a dollar in 2009, the four-year ‘dumsor’ scourge and the government’s unbridled borrowing and resort to high taxes, which had killed many businesses and made production in Ghana unattractive.

“And this is why we are making the case that it is time for the good people of Ghana to give the NPP the opportunity to bring about certain changes. As Ghanaians, no matter what our political persuasion is, we all want to see Ghana go forward, we all want to see Ghana transformed. Our country is a very rich country and we shouldn’t be where we are today, we should be much further ahead. So it is the case that it is time for us in the spirit of patriotism to really support change and help in building a new economy and to transform our country.” Dr. Bawumia stated.

The NPP Vice-Presidential candidate noted that to transform the economy, an NPP government under Nana Akufo-Addo will focus on policies that will make Ghana a production hub and the most business and people friendly economy in Africa in order to ensure that enough employment is generated for the youth of the country and businesses are able to grow and expand and ensure an increase in revenues through the payment of corporate and income taxes, for infrastructural and social spending.