Akufo-Addo’s Rotten Record

As if the backlash suffered by Nana Akufo-Addo as a result of his call for comparison of record between him and His Excellency President John Evans Atta Mills at the opposition New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) recently-held rally at Mantse Agbona, James Town, in Accra, was not enough, Mr. Kyeremateng Boakye Agyarko, the Campaign Manager to the NPP flagbearer, for some strange reasons also decided to do the unthinkable.

Forcing it down the throat of Ghanaians, the Akufo-Addo’s Campaign Manager in an interview with The New Statesman newspaper (obviously a propaganda mouthpiece of the NPP flagbearer) praises his boss for having a solid and matchless record of accomplishment in public service, that, according to him, places him above His Excellency President J.E.A. Mills, forgetting how uninhabitable the only medical facility his( Nana Addo’s) hometown, Kyebi has become.

Obviously churning out flagrant lies, Mr. Boakye Agyarko said among others, that his boss, Akufo-Addo discharges his responsibilities creditably, and with high sense of integrity; but one asks whether the hospital on his home soil never existed for all the years that he spent in Parliament as a representative of the people of the Akim Abuakwa South in addition to years as a Minister of State under the erstwhile Kufuor-led-NPP administration.

Following the NPP flagbearer’s call for record to be compared and subsequent praise-singing by persons like Boakye Agyarko, The Informer has decided to bring to the attention of Ghanaians Nana Addo’s performance in his own hometown, Kyebi in the Eastern Region of Ghana; since charity begins at home. The good people of Kyebi in the Akim Abuakwa South Constituency were very grateful to the first NDC government for putting up a health facility for them. The Kyebi District Hospital which was commissioned by His Excellency President John Evans Atta Mills, then a Vice President to former President Rawlings, since 2000 has never seen any major face-lift, particularly in terms of up-grading facilities at the hospital.

Even though, Akufo-Addo was a key member in the Kufuor administration apart from years that he had been a representative of the people of Akim Abuakwa South, he failed woefully to save the hospital from collapse, yet Boakye Agyarko and the NPP still insist he performed creditably and discharged his responsibilities accordingly, in all the years that he spent working for the State. One would have expected that with this big hospital facility that the NDC government had put up to serve the people of Kyebi and its surrounding villages in his constituency, Akufo-Addo would make rehabilitation of the hospital one of his priorities.

From a good home and since he does not access the facility, he failed to pay attention to the hospital which today, is in a total state of disrepair. In this paper’s painstaking efforts to really know the current condition prevailing at the hospital, it came out that: (I) The hospital has only one doctor, Dr. Okyere. This is because there are no quarters for doctors who come to work there to live in. (ii) The only generator in the hospital does not work (iii) The toilets and bathrooms of the hospital are all eyesore. (iv) Almost every facility in the hospital is in a state of disrepair (v) Because there is only one doctor, patients at the hospital would have to wait for hours to see him: Sometimes, overwhelmed, the doctor does not come at all to the hospital. The result is death. (vi) Pregnant women who go to the hospital in the morning get to see the doctor in the evening. (vii) The people of Kyebi who Akufo-Addo hopes will vote him into power come this December no longer go to the Kyebi Hospital: They visit other hospitals for proper healthcare

If Akufo-Addo, as MP for 12 years for the people of Kyebi and its environs, went on to become Foreign Minister and Attorney-General cannot help the people in his own constituency, how can he help the entire nation? Is this the record he believes can beat President Mills' record? We live to see.