1 village, 1 dam better than 1 chief, 1 Land Cruiser – NPP

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s ‘1-Village, 1-Dam’ policy is better than the ‘1-Chief, 1-Land Cruiser’ gift campaign being propagated by President John Mahama and the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Yaw Buabeng Asamoah, the opposition New Patriotic Party’s parliamentary nominee for Adentan, has said.

Since the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) announced the ‘1-Village, 1-Dam’ policy in the Upper East Region last week, several persons, especially members of the NDC, have indicated that the programme is unrealistic. One such critic, Mr Kojo Adu-Asare, a presidential staffer, on Monday August 31 told Moro Awudu, host of Inside Politics on Class 91.3 FM that: “Nobody is disputing the fact that one can dream. One can dream only to wake up the next morning and find out that it is just a dream.”

“Thankfully, the Ghanaian voter is becoming very sophisticated and also as the days go by, they (voters) become wide awake and they can decipher what looks like truth, what truth sounds like and so on and so forth. The reason why Nana Addo’s promises have assumed such dimensions…is because [they are] too far-fetched and almost make reality impossible, other than that dreaming is fair,” he said.

However, speaking as a guest on Political Capital on Accra100.5FM hosted by Paa Kwesi Parker-Wilson on Wednesday August 31, Mr Buabeng Asamoah noted that the policy was not a dream but something that would actually be implemented should the NPP win the elections to form a government.

He argued that monies that would otherwise have been used to purchase Land Cruisers to bribe chiefs would be used to provide dams for the three regions in northern Ghana in order to assist the predominantly farming population.

“’One village, onedam’ is better than ‘One Chief, One Land Cruiser’. If you look at the price of one Land Cruiser, you will realise that it will not be difficult to implement this policy. Plan Ghana (a non-governmental organisation) constructed [a number of dams] which cost between GHS 35,000 and GHS 40,000. And so, if you juxtapose it with the cost of one Land Cruiser, it shouldn’t be difficult to implement the policy,” he said.