Gabby Otchere-Darko, a key figure in the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has expressed deep disappointment over the insufficient recognition of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s notable accomplishments.
Despite the President’s significant strides in key sectors, particularly education and health, Mr. Otchere-Darko believes he has not received the credit he deserves.
In an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Face to Face on Channel One TV, Mr Otchere-Darko noted that overall conditions have improved, stressing that the quality of education has been maintained despite increased access.
“If more children are gaining access to education, and the results show that the quality of education has not fallen, what other problems matter? And there are more teachers than they had before. Teachers are not complaining that they have not been paid their salaries. I think that Akufo-Addo has not been given the credit that he deserves.”
He cited instances where many businesses were on the brink of collapse during Mahama’s tenure due to frequent power outages, commonly known as “Dumsor.”
In contrast, he pointed out that Akufo-Addo’s government has demonstrated resilience, unlike Mahama’s administration, which was forced to seek an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout despite the absence of a global economic crisis.
“In 2015, and 2016 we didn’t have any global crisis, yet we have queues at our filling stations. In 2015, and 2016, go and ask Ghanaian barbers, seamstresses, hairdressers, cold store operators, and hoteliers. Hotels were refusing to accept people because they could not afford to turn the lights on for their generators.
“People were working and using most of their salaries to pay electricity bills, to keep the generator on. All these things happened even though there was no global crisis.
“The global crisis that the world went through that Ghana suffered badly, and Ghanaians suffered, what if we didn’t have Akufo-Addo and we had somebody else? Compare what happened maybe 2014, and 2015 when we were forced to go to IMF for a bailout when we didn’t have a global crisis.
He acknowledged the challenges faced by Ghanaians over the past three years, noting that things have started to normalise.
“People have struggled for the past three years, there’s absolutely no two ways about that. It’s called the cost of living crisis. And it’s not peculiar to Ghana, but because of our vulnerabilities, it has hurt us the most than many countries… Every Ghanaian can say that they can see some level of normalisation.”
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