The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo has said President John Mahama does not have the capacity to improve Ghana’s economic prospects.
Nana Akufo-Addo lamented that the year by year decline of the economy’s growth figures over the course of President Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) government is the reason his call for a change in leadership ahead of the 2016 polls.
“Every single year since he came, the Ghanaian economy has gone further and further into declined. In his four years, we are now growing the economy of Ghana at less that 4 percent. In Kufuor’s time, it was growing at 9 percent and it has come to 4 percent,” he said on Kumasi-based Nhyira FM.
“It looks like if he sits another two or three years, we will see minus growth in Ghana. He hasn’t got the capacity to be able to organise the economy of our country to put in the proper footing,” the NPP flagberer stated further.
Nana Akufo-Addo added that Ghana was moving backwards and losing out to neighboring countries like the Ivory Coast thus charged Ghanaians to embrace new leadership in the NPP.
“We are just moving backwards. We have to change. We need to have a new direction, new leadership, and new policies.”
He lauded the work the John Kufuor-led NPP administration between 2001 and 2008 saying “he set us on a new path of growth and development” but held that the NDC government has since eroded those gains.
“We build and they come to waste,” Nana Akufo-Addo said of the perceived turn of events.
Mahama’s calls for debate with Nana Addo
President Mahama’s handling of the economy has been a major source of contention ahead of the polls with the NDC flagbearer making known his desire to debate his NPP counterpart.
In his latest call, President Mahama said Ghanaians deserved a face up between the leading presidential contenders as it would afford them the opportunity to have a factual debate on the state of the economy.
Prior to this, President Mahama had accused Nana Akufo-Addo of running away from an opportunity to debate him on issues surrounding his term of office.
He maintains that a prospective debate between the two will allow them to adequately settle their contrasting views on a number of issues especially matters pertaining to the economy.
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