Former PNC General Secretary, Atik Mohammed has hailed Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as being one of the finest brains Ghana and the New Patriotic Party is blessed with.

Atik Mohammed, contributing to Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" morning show, tagged Dr. Bawumia as a competent leader saying, "I trust in the competence of the Vice President. I do. You see circumstances may somewhat create impressions about what he could otherwise have done but you cannot take his competence away from him".

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is among the ten candidates vying for the position of flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party as the party gears up for its Special Delegates Congress on August 26 and main congress on November 4, 2023.

The Special Delegates Congress is to trim the number of the aspirants to five and the five compete in the main Congress.

Atik absolved the Vice President of blames that he being the Head of the Economic Management Team (EMT) is responsible for the economic woes visited upon Ghanaians as a result of financial misdirection.

He argued that Dr. Bawumia, although Head of the EMT, is somehow only a figurehead of the team and that when it comes to making financial decisions, the buck stops with the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.

"The Finance Minister does not answer to him. He has answers to the President. The point I am trying to establish is he is not the Head of the EMT in the sense that he controls economic policy. He is just a part of a team; he happens to chair that team...The team itself answers to somebody. You report to someone. The Finance Minister is answerable to only one person who is the President," he said.