General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has let loose a barrage of criticisms on former President John Dramani Mahama tagging him as the worst spender in an election year.
According to him, between November and December of 2012, the Mahama administration went on a reckless payment spree to companies such as Gyeeda, Rlg, Azomtaba and Zuriel Group of Companies among many others.
And yet the government, at the time, callously cancelled payment of the nurses and teachers’ training allowances under the pretext there was no money.
“It was the worst expenditure in an election year ever and when you see the figures you will cry for this country,” he said.
Mr. John Boadu was responding to assertions the former President made in his remarks at the NDC’s Professionals Forum lecture series on the topic, “The State of Ghana’s Economy-The Scorecard’.
Mr. Mahama launched a scathing attack on government’s handling of the economy insisting the NPP administration now relies on covid-19 as the whipping boy blamed for the current state of the economy.
He insisted that just like covid-19 deals seriously with persons with underlying conditions, its impact has been devastation because of the bad economic management.
Speaking on Accra 100.5 FM’s morning show, ‘Ghana Yensom’, however, Mr. Boadu argued even in 2016 the Mahama government spent recklessly and cited the Sibton Switch contract as an example of the recklessness of the government at the time.
According to him, the contract that the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government was able to execute with US$4.5 million, the Mahama administration without recourse to the PPA just dumped it on the lap of Rlg founder, Roland Agambire, for a whopping US$1.2 billion.
He said, “$1.2 billion for a contract that could be executed with just $4.5 million; this was the kind of government and persons who still have the courage to organize a forum to criticize the NPP administration.”
“Even when we tried to cancel the contract and managed to save Ghana this quantum amount of money, which made it possible to pay the teachers and nurses’ training college allowances that the NDC claimed, it could not pay.”
“We have recouped all that money and today it is funding the free SHS to ensure every Ghanaian child has access to free education, which the NDC claimed was not feasible and could not be done,” he said.
Mr. John Boadu stressed that the NPP government does not regret any of the expenditures it made in order to bring relief to the Ghanaian people including the water and electricity freebies offered during the covid-19 pandemic.
Mr. Mahama, he said, could criticize the NPP government and continue to claim these expenditures have burdened the economy, and yet despite these challenges President Akufo-Addo has been able to execute what the NDC administration could not do even without suffering the impact of a pandemic.
According to him, the effect of covid-19 on economies across the world in 2020 was undeniable and yet Ghana is one of the countries that have managed to post a positive growth when most countries were recording negative growths.
He argued that the pronouncements of the former President on the debt to GDP ratio are even scandalous for a person who managed Ghana’s economic management team under the Prof. Atta Mills presidency.
He argued that following the pandemic, countries across the world experienced their debt to GDP ratio increasing significantly because of the extra expenditure they were compelled to make due to COVID.
John Boadu noted that in spite of these distressing situations, the Akufo-Addo has managed to return the country to the path of growth and wondered whether the former President and his NDC are still oblivious of how COVID ravaged the world economy.
