Opinions of Saturday, 12 October 2024

Columnist: Dr. John-Baptist Naah

Ghanaians should reward the NPP with resounding rejection in 2024 for letting many down

NPP flag NPP flag

The governing NPP regime led by President Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia cannot stop amazing Ghanaians with arrogance of power and poor leadership for the past 8 years in running the country.

To have the same badly performing government for about 8 years to imagine to ‘break the 8’ in 2024 is indeed astonishing to say the least.

There is no doubt that the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia-led government has performed so badly across various sectors of the economy.

For instance, the weakening exchange rate, which is now pegged at a $ to 16GHS as in October 2024 has exposed the weak economic fundamentals of this underperforming regime.

To make the dire economic situation even worst, the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia-led government decided to collapse about 40 domestic banks and financial institutions that employed many and supported small & medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), leading to loss of sustainable jobs.

As if this is not bad enough, the former Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta heartlessly and draconianly implemented the domestic debt exchange program (DDEP) as part of the IMF $3 billion loan.

This singular act of this current regime led to serious haircuts of the middle class of Ghanaians including vulnerable pensioners who were dependent on matured coupons to survive the economic hardships in the country.

Additionally, the contentiously passed e-levy and increases in taxes including nuisance taxes like the bola or sanitation tax and Covid taxes on petroleum products further burdened the ordinary Ghanaian.

This was contrary to the promise of the NPP’s promise of moving away from more taxation to more production.

Regarding corruption, the worst performance of the corruption perception index (CPI) of 43% in 2016 under former President Mahama is the best performance of Akufo-Addo’s regime as in 2023. The Akufo-Addo-Bawumia-led regime also recorded the highest number of corruption scandals so far.

This reality of poor corruption situation is contrary to what the NPP promised Ghanaians in 2016.

The cardinal ‘sin’ of this Akufo-Addo-Bawumia-led regime, in my opinion, is the flourishing galamsey menace which has destroyed our forest reserves and major water bodies that will take several years to recover.

How can such a government of poor performance coupled with arrogance of power be thinking of ‘breaking the 8’ in the history of Ghana’s politics?

The current Flagbearer of the NPP, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is not his own man and will be his own if Ghanaians attempt to vote him a chance after his boss, Akufo-Addo.

The NPP needs to be in opposition to deeply reflect about their shortfalls, correct them and come back to the Ghanaian electorate another time but not these upcoming general elections in December 7, 2024.

Ghanaians should rather reward the NPP with resounding rejection in 2024 for letting many down and bring back more honest, experienced and visionary leader, John Dramani Mahama to the Flagstaff House to reset and rebuild the nation for sustainable development.