Opinions of Friday, 26 January 2024

Columnist: Abdulai Abdul Razak

Former president Mahama can't be the best alternative for Ghanaians; the alternative is super scary

John Dramani Mahama John Dramani Mahama

The former President, John Mahama started his tour with lots of promises to the Ghanaian electorates with the so-called 24-hour economy at the front burner as a game changer.

Surprisingly, recent comments from the man who was on a promising spree have slowed down on that tangent of promising heaven and earth.

Quite unfortunately, I have seen some videos of the former President lamenting with no sign of hope for Ghanaians in sharp contrast to when he started with a plethora of promises.

Fast forward, in one of the videos, he has made it clear to all teacher unions from GNAT, NAGRAT, CCT, TEWU, etc not to have any hope of providing good conditions of service to them sighting baseless argument that the country is broken down in the unlikely event he wins the 2024 elections.

I have said countless times that the former President's ambition is purely to satisfy his desire to govern again not to improve any situation in the Country.

Put simply, the National Democratic Congress, NDC cannot be the best alternative for Ghanaians looking at the abysmal records of the Party without any global economic challenges.

Clearly, under the tenure of the former President without any global economic downturn, he failed woefully to manage the country's economy by subjecting Ghanaians to tough times.

He canceled the teacher training allowance, nursing training allowance, and the introduction of a three-month pay policy which many workers especially teachers were affected by for working for more than two or three years with only three months' pay.

Realistically, I'm not astonished at all about the recent slowdown of the former President's promises to that of giving excuses and crying more than the bereaved.

The former President is not a leader with the vision and the willpower to tackle challenges like the New Patriotic Party (NPP: Development in Freedom) under the visionary leadership of the Nana/Bawumia administration.

Admittedly, the country has been through tough hurdles for the past years but the government of Nana/Bawumia continued to pay teachers allowance, and nursing training allowance, canceled the three-month pay policy, and introduced Professional Development allowance (PDA) for both teaching and non-teaching staff across the teaching fraternity.

In addition to the above-mentioned inconsistencies and the double standard nature of the former President, the NPP government through its commitment and determination to remove the barriers children of school-going age went through as a result of lack of money by parents to pay their ward's fees introduced the Free SHS policy.

Under this flagship policy initiative, students are allowed to continue their secondary education for the past seven 7 good years with continuous expansion of dormitory blocks and classrooms to accommodate the increasing number of students across the nook and cranny of the Country.

This single innovative policy has drastically reduced the burden of parents when it comes to payment of school fees with quality not compromised entirely with the recent incredible performance of the WASSCE students under the Free SHS policy.

In summary, the recent utterances by the former President have exposed his lack of desire to face challenges head-on with a barrage of excuses. He is not a leader for Ghanaians to put their hopes on.