Presidential candidate of the Independent Peoples’ Party, Kofi Akpaloo says the main opposition NPP plagiarized his idea when it promised to cite one factory in every district.
According to him the NPP began talking about ‘1-district,1-factory’ after the IPP launched its 30-page manifesto at the party headquarters at Denyame in Kumasi last June.
The NPP’s 2016 campaign appears to be revolving around Agriculture and Agribusiness. Nana Akufo-Addo, on the campaign trail on June 5, 2016, promised to build one factory in each of the 216 districts as part of a grand plan to industrialise Ghana’s economy.
But crying foul, IPP flagbearer said the plan is not original to the NPP.
“From 2007 to 11 June, 2016 he [Akufo-Addo] has not mentioned anything about one factory, one district. When we launched this on the 14 June then he started talking about 1-district,1-factory, he said at an SGL Inter-Political Party Forum held at the Alisa Hotel in Accra Wednesday.
In its 2016 manifesto themed “IPP Victory 2016; A new plan for jobs and wealth creation”, Kofi Akpaloo mentioned that his party will build 250 districts nationwide if elected.
“[They] looked at the ‘nationwide’ and he turned it to one-district one factory…so he stole that idea from me” Mr. Akpaloo said.
The 45-year old claimed that unlike the NPP, his party had been talking about industrializing the Ghanaian economy as far back as 2007.
Nonetheless, the NPP version of his idea will not work. This is because it ignores, economies of scale, skilled labour, ecological and environmental factors, he claimed.
“It will not work because you don’t just build factories. You have to look at so many factors” he said.
Kofi Akpaloo said it will be possible to cite 40 factories in one location that satisfies the economic and environmental imperatives for establishing factories.
The IPP Presidential candidate has also promised to pay unemployed youths GH¢1,200 each a month while persons below 18 years of age will receive GH¢600.
Kofi Akpaloo has been eyeing the presidency since 2010 but has never been able to finalise the process to actually contest in a presidential election.
His only high-profile political contest was in 2004 when he contested for Parliament as an independent candidate in the Manhyia constituency in the Ashanti region, but lost to Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor of the NPP.
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