Adom-Otchere’s COVID economics argument full of flaws – Sekou Nkrumah

Dr Sekou Nkrumah, a son of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has schooled Paul Adom-Otchere on his rants that #FixTheCountry advocates should go and learn “COVID economics”.

Dr Sekou Nkrumah wrote on his Facebook timeline, “Some serious flaws dey Paul’s argument on covid economics O! Ghana (and generally Africa ) was not seriously affected by covid, so government acted more out of panic than reality!”

Paul Adom-Otchere, the host of Good Evening Ghana on Metro TV went on a tirade against #FixTheCountry advocates on Tuesday.

In the Editorial segment of his bi-weekly show, Paul Adom-Otchere, a board member of National Communications Authority (NCA) averred without adducing any evidence, “Until February 2020, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister, had grown this [Ghana’s] economy better than they inherited even with a significant social intervention in education whilst discharging significant legacy debts. I think we should situate the discussion well. If after all is said and done, we still think they should fix it, then by all means let’s tell them so.”

Before the start of his political talk show last Tuesday, May 4, Adom-Otchere had asked a question in a tweet:

“#FixIt, #FixTheCountry, but whose fault is it, @JDMahama? @NAkufoAddo? COVID-19, CSO’s, Media, or whom? Deputy Finance Minister joins us tonight on @GoodEvening_Gh to tell us about the new taxes and to answer questions on the-why, the -what, and the-when?"

Nana Aba Anamoah, the General Manager of GHOne TV, on seeing the tweet from the Good Evening Ghana host retweeted:

"For once, be brave and tell this administration led by @NAkufoAddo to #FixTheCountry and stop dragging others in. Is John Mahama our President? CSOs, Media? Did we elect them? Stop this life!!"

But in his reaction, Adom-Otchere said all those who were retweeting and commenting on his post, including Nana Aba Anamoah, had missed the COVID-19 part of his tweet because he was concerned about Sam Jonah’s analysis of Ghana’s economy in 2020 without COVID-19.

“I don’t know that disease has spread to affect other people but we clearly are in a post-COVID era; I’m not so sure people understand that. I am interested in fixing the country, everyone is interested in fixing the country but this is 2021 so, in 2020, some of you who are complaining actually have laid off their staff because of COVID in 2020 but the government [of Ghana] didn’t lay off any staff…,” Adom-Otchere observed.

He continued: “Ghana has been a COVID success [because] money was spent, thus, water, electricity was given free to the citizens. We didn’t advance these monies [because] it was a decision that was taken to postpone it to save lives…everything was as against normal. The leadership of the day in 2020 guided us to a certain leadership that we all applauded.

"Have you forgotten about 2020; all those shouting [fix it], have you forgotten that we went through 2020..? When you are dealing with these things, deal with them intellectually, don’t close your eyes. Remember your O-level and A-level, didn’t you do economics in O-level, what are you talking about? Didn’t you see 2020?”

Adom-Otchere went on, “If you come to talk about fix the economy, don’t talk about fix the economy without understanding that there was COVID or pretending that you didn’t understand the whole COVID economics. Maybe you didn’t understand COVID economics, go and read it. Find somebody who understands it to teach you. COVID economics, go and learn it, there is something like that…Ghana was one of the few countries that grew above zero [in COVID era] most countries were doing negative.

“Those of you who think that be bold and say, be bold and say what? You too be bold and learn COVID economics. Be bold, open your book, read COVID economics, learn it! Go and be bold and read your books, that’s important; COVID economics go and learn it!” he stressed.