Get a copy of Green Book to cross-check my projects – Mahama to doubters

Former President John Dramani Mahama has asked all doubting Thomases to get a copy of the National Democratic Congress’ Green Book to cross-check whether his erstwhile administration’s infrastructural projects exist in reality or only in that book.

The 2020 flagbearer of the NDC told party supporters at their 28th-anniversary flag-raising ceremony in Accra that all his achievements are documented in the Green Book, adding: “I urge all doubters to get a copy and step into their communities and cross-check if the projects outlined there – the E-blocks, the interchanges, the hospitals, and other transformational projects – exist only in that book.”

Mr Mahama’s challenge to his critics follows a recent comment by President Nana Akufo-Addo that Mr Mahama’s much-touted “unprecedented infrastructural” projects only existed in the Green Book.

“We made a pledge to the Ghanaian people to expand and improve the road network while closing the missing links in the network. We had to make this pledge because we know that the so-called unprecedented infrastructure development of the Mahama administration was fantasy; existing in the Green Book and not on the ground,” President Akufo-Addo said on 5 June 2020 when he inaugurated the $57-million Tema Motorway Interchange project that is being financed by the government of Japan through the Japanese International Cooperation Agreement (JICA).

A few days after the President’s comment, a former Deputy Minister of Communication in the last administration, Mr Felix Kwakye Ofosu, responded, saying every single project captured in the Green Book exists and not a fantasy.

Mr Kwakye Ofosu said: “For the avoidance of doubt, there is not a single project in the Green Book which does not exist on the ground today or for which clear context has not been provided regarding its status. Anybody interested in the truth would simply match what is stated in the book to what exists. Such an exercise would yield only one outcome, which is that the work shown in the book are as real as they come and evidence of them are abundant”.

“How can President Akufo-Addo, for instance, look the people of Ghana in the eye and say that the Ridge Hospital doesn’t exist when everybody knows it does and that on the 4th of March 2020 he toured it to ostensibly to ascertain the state of preparedness of that magnificent edifice toward the fight against COVID-19?” Mr Kwakye Ofosu asked.

“Surely, the President would not have Ghanaians believe that what he saw on his visit to the hospital was a fantasy or that he was walking on the pages of the Green Book when undertaking the tour”, he said, noting: “Or is the President telling the people of Ghana that when on the same 4th of March, 2020, he toured the ultra-modern Terminal 3 at the Kotoka International Airport to learn about their COVID-19 preparedness, he was inspecting a phantom facility?”