It is said that sin has many tools, but deception is the handle that fits them all. It is worrying that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is quickly carving out a niche for itself as a master of the art of deception. I’m, therefore, cynical about their future campaign promises, and my cynicism is definitely not without cause. I have some justifications to make. Some of the broken promises of the NPP are as follows:

Expansion of the railway to the northern part of Ghana, construction of a public university in every region, building a factory in every district, creating 500,000 jobs every year, engaging 20,000 sanitary inspectors every year, and construction of fifty thousand housing units per year, just to mention a few.

Unfortunately, most of these were not fulfilled. The question many people would want to ask is: did the NPP lie in their campaign, or, to use a less pejorative term, did they mislead the electorate for political gain?

For instance, one constituency, one million dollars was a funny promise. In Ghana, we have the District Assembly Common Fund, so why not promise to put that one million into that statutory fund? And they wanted to allocate one million to a purely electoral area that is not self-accounting. If this was not an avenue for looting, what else could it have been?

Pure negative intent because the constituencies are pure political divisions under the MPs, who have no locus in our constitution to manage funds. In any case, are the challenges of all the constituencies homogeneous? Absolutely no! This was a pure one-shop solution, a deceptive strategy used to win power.

In the promise of creating 500,000 jobs a year, the youth of this country are the best judges as to whether this promise was fulfilled. Interestingly, Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia did not tell the people of Ghana how they were going to create those jobs.

Conversely, President John Dramani Mahama outlined his job creation strategy, which he called Livelihood Empowerment through Skills Development, using YEA, then Entrepreneurship Development using YES, revival of GIHOC Holding, Farmer Service Centre concept, expanding job avenues by building more schools, more health facilities, expanding military garrisons, and increasing police and other security agencies numbers and roles. Growing the economy to 8% automatically churned out jobs, and this is what is called a clear job creation strategy.

The failed promises of the Akufo-Addo and Bawumia-led governments brought hunger, suffering, and economic recession to this country. What is the guarantee that Bawumia will do differently if given the mandate to rule this nation?