Following Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's presentation of the Nana Akufo-Addo government's infrastructure delivery record, the opposition National Democratic Congress, led by its National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi rubbished the Vice President's claim and promised to expose him for lying.
Dr. Bawumia revealed that the Akufo-Addo government has delivered 17,600 infrastructure projects in different sectors which were at different stages of completion across all districts in the country.
To make it easier for independent verification, Dr. Bawumia announced a government website which has listed all the infrastructure projects, sectors, locations and their current state of completion - completed and ongoing.
But soon after the Vice President's presentation, the NDC National Communications Officer promised to offer rebuttals to Dr. Bawumia in 48 hours, that's two days after the presentation.
However, Sammy Gyamfi pushed his date to criticize Dr. Bawumia forward by four more days.
As anxious journalists got ready for what promised to be the biggest expose in recent times, Sammy Gyamfi listed only 26 projects, which he claimed were ‘ghost projects’, which he accused Dr. Bawumia of adding to the infrastructure achievements of the NPP since 2017.
Eventhough the governing NPP has questioned the authenticity of the 26 "ghost" projects the NDC has questioned, an admission of it, nonetheless represents an insignificant percentage to render Dr. Bawumia's infrastructure presentation as "compendium of lies," as Sammy Gyamfi described it.
By Sammy Gyamfi's own data of 26 "ghost", projects out of 18,025 currently captured on the tracker which Dr. Bawumia presented, the NDC's National Communications Officer has arithmetically conceded that 99.9% of Bawumia's infrastructure exist, as the 26 "ghost" projects represent just 0.1% of the18,025 infrastructure projects the NPP has listed on its infrastructure delivery tracker www.deliverytracker.gov.gh.
Meanwhile various actors on social media have on their own provided ample evidences to dispute some of the claims by Sammy Gyamfi.
Evidence coming out indicates that the projects are actually existing however, misplacement of some of them in terms of where they are actually located abound. These include inadvertent swapping of districts with similar names during the inputting of data, but suggested the NDC is being mischievous with minor errors, which are being amended.
"For example, Sammi Gyamfi talked about projects in Adeifua, Beikyema Nkwanta on it, which is ongoing but they say it doesn't exist. Also Derma Asuoso road, that road is ongoing and the contractor is on sight but they say it doesn't exist."
The Kanda water for instance, was one that was recorded as an ongoing project. People pointed out that it seems to have been abandoned so we checked from the municipality. And in fact they said that they did dig the borehole, but they found out that the water was bad so they decided to cap it and not continue with the project. So in their entries, they did not recognize it as an abandoned project. But those are very easy to amend.
The Vice President stressed government has demonstrated transparency by presenting its infrastructure achievements claims on a public website for scrutiny, and challenged the NDC to also present their records in every district for similar scrutiny.