In 2022, during the peak of the economic crisis, a Member of Parliament (MP) for Tamale Central, Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, questioned what other countries are doing differently from Ghana.
He said: "Why is it that our neighbouring countries are not suffering the way we are suffering? Why is Togo not suffering the way we are suffering? Why is it that Burkina Faso is not suffering the way we are suffering?
"COVID hit all of us; was Ghana the only country that was hit by COVID? Ghana was not the only country that was hit by COVID. As a matter of fact, all those countries (our neighbours) none of them went to the IMF to borrow $3 billion in the name of COVID. None of them."
Read the full story originally published on December 6, 2022 by GhanaWeb
Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tamale Central, has criticized the government for consistently blaming the COVID-19 pandemic for Ghana's hardship.
Speaking in a TV3 interview monitored by GhanaWeb, the MP questioned why Ghana's neighbouring countries are not going through the same hardship since all of them were also hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He added that the only reason Ghana is worse off is the poor management of the current government, which wasted all the resources the country got as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Why is it that our neighbouring countries are not suffering the way we are suffering? Why is Togo not suffering the way we are suffering? Why is it that Burkina Faso is not suffering the way we are suffering?
"COVID hit all of us; was Ghana the only country that was hit by COVID? Ghana was not the only country that was hit by COVID. As a matter of fact, all those countries (our neighbours) none of them went to the IMF to borrow $3 billion in the name of COVID. None of them.
"As a matter of fact, Burkina Faso went for $20 million. None of our neighbours went to the World Bank to borrow about $906 million... none of them went to their central bank to request (GHS) 10 billion; they ended up borrowing (GHS) 20 billion," he said.
He went on to say that, despite the limited resources available to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghana's neighbours did a better job of mitigating the pandemic's impact.
Also, the MP said that if the government wants Ghanaians to support its policies to get the country out of the current economic mess, it should lead by example by drastically reducing its expenditure.
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