Minister for Education, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has said former President John Dramani Mahama settling on Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemeng as a running mate is a strategy the NDC flagbearer is using to avoid competition in 2024.

Deducing his analysis from an analogy used by the former president, Mr Opoku Prempeh said he is suspicious Mr Mahama believing his running mate is advanced in age, is using her to avoid possible competition within the NDC when he loses the 2020 presidential elections and decides to contest again in 2024.

“Recently President Mahama said something, he said in this world if you come first, you’ll leave early. The woman is older than him so does he mean the woman will die before him? I see that President Mahama wants to contest in 2024, he knows that as for 2020 he will lose. So, he doesn’t want opposition, he won’t go for a young man like me who will say he is younger than him. That is why he settled on Naana. It is very deep, but he will keep confessing as if he has been hypnotized,” the minister said.

The Education Minister made this comment when he appeared on Net 2’s programme, The Seat.

Former President Mahama who is seeking a comeback to office recently, whiles speaking about Ghana’s debt stock, advanced that following the natural order of things, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who is 76-years old will not live to repay the debts he piling up at the expense of future generations.

“If we follow the order of life, the path ahead of Akufo-Addo is shorter than all of you, young people. If you go to the market, you’ll see a small goatskin and an old goatskin. Young people can die I agree but if the natural order is to be maintained somebody who is twenty years old is going to live the next fifty years”.

“At my age, I’m going to live shorter, Nana Akufo-Addo is going to live shorter because at his age, in the natural order of things, he has shorter time so that debt he is not going to pay,” the former President told the Chiefs and people of Nadowli during a recent campaign event where he was urging Ghanaians to demand accountability from the ruling government.