The church is a place for serious business with God. People who spread the word of God say the church is the baptised followers of Jesus Christ, called together by Him, led by elders, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and to hear God’s Word. It cannot be a place for anybody wanting to occupy the high office of the land to go joke. The church cannot be any place for jokes by any person, irrespective of status.

It was therefore condemnable for the flagbearer of the ruling NPP to promise to pay churches, and the latter changed his mind and called it a "joke" because he was heavily whipped by discerning minds for such a lazy promise. Joking in the church?

The NPP is known for deceit and deception during campaigns, and they have started it once more going into the 2024 general elections. I will only demonstrate two instances. First, you remember that in Cape Coast, when the NPP launched their 2020 manifesto, they promised the people of Cape Coast an airport and a harbour.

The current flagbearer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, was the one who read the promise from the manifesto as follows: “For the people of Cape Coast, I have good news for you: we are building a new harbour in Cape Coast and a new airport in Cape Coast. We must do that.”

Clearly, the idea of an airport and a harbor was not in their manifesto, but the night before the launch, the people of Cape Coast protested strongly through radio that they were deserving of an airport and a harbour. The NPP quickly amended its manifesto to include an airport and a harbor for Cape Coast.

After the 2020 elections, the president made a U-turn and claimed that he was not aware of such a promise to the people of Ghana, and most especially the Cape Coast. He said, “The commitment was never to build a harbour. It was to a landing site. It is very, very important. And you look at page 88 of the NPP manifesto for the 2020 election. It’s very clear”.

He furthered that “as far as the harbour is concerned, we have to be clear in our minds: we never committed ourselves... I never said I was going to build a harbour on Cape Coast. I said I was going to build a landing site, and that would start next year.”

As we speak, there is no landing site project ongoing in Cape Coast after amending his stance.

The president was not spearheaded for denying a promise clearly made to Ghanaians. The fire forced him to apologize, claiming he examined the 2020 manifesto and saw that the promise he denied was actually made. In all this, the NPP flagbearer who read the promise in Cape Coast never said anything or made
any attempt to correct his boss. Perhaps he smuggled the promise into the manifesto at the blind side of his boss just for votes.

The second issue I will raise is free water and electricity. Going into the 2020 elections, the government announced free water and electricity for consumers. Some sections of Ghanaians criticized that it was just for votes, but the government claimed it was to alleviate the suffering COVID-19 had had on Ghanaians. In the 2020 elections, this was withdrawn, and electricity and water tariffs were increased significantly.

The government also introduced the COVID-19 Health Levy, the Sanitation and Pollution Levy, the Financial Sector Clean Up Levy, and the Energy Sector Recovery Levy in 2021. It proceeded to introduce an Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) in 2022.

It will shock you to learn that the NPP flagbearer who claimed he does not believe in taxing mobile money was the one who held a lecture on digitalization to condition the minds of Ghanaians to accept the E-Levy the government was going to introduce. The E-levy was introduced in the 2022 budget exactly
two weeks after this lecture.

Ghanaians strongly resisted these taxes, particularly the Covid-19 and E-levy. The information minister at the time, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, explained that the free electricity and water we enjoyed in 2020 must be paid for through taxes. “It was free to the people of Ghana at the time... When we say free electricity,
doesn’t mean that the IPP (Independent Power Producer) is also going to say that because the President has said free electricity, I won’t charge for it,” he stated.

He said that Ghana has spent about GH¢19 billion on COVID-19-related issues, and that includes the relief package for utilities. “But that 19 billion Cedis has to be paid for at some point; the liabilities we have incurred have to be paid for.”

Aside from these two instances, the NPP made several other promises, which they later denied or abandoned because they were "jokes." They denied building 360 new senior high schools from scratch, creating a bank account for every Ghanaian, restoring the value of the Cedi and improving macro-economic stability, transforming Ghana in their first 100 days in office, and many more. They, most importantly, reduced the office of the Vice President to a mere “driver’s mate” just to blackmail Akufo-Addo for their parochial political gain.

The promises of the NPP cannot be taken seriously. They are “jokes,” as famously said by their flagbearer, just like their promises in both 2016 and 2020. The promise to cancel E-Levy and betting taxes was a joke. The promise not to tax churches was a joke. The promise to align the import duty at Tema port (Ghana),
the import duty at the Lome Port (Togo) was a joke. The promise to stop LGBTQI+ activities was a joke. They despise taxes when seeking votes, but they love them so much when they get the vote.

Ghanaians must instead place a premium on the promises John Mahama and the NDC made in the 2020 People's Manifesto and proceed to accept an enhanced version of it going into the 2024 elections.

John Mahama and his running mate, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, will never joke in any place they stand to promise the people of Ghana, let alone an important place like the Holy Place of God, the Church. They have never done that and will never do it because they place a high premium on the offices of the president and vice president.