Ghana has failed as a country but Akufo-Addo is ‘unbelievably excellent!’ — Prof. Adei

A former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management Public Administration (GIMPA) who is now boss of the National Development Planning Commission, Professor Stephen Adei has absolved Akufo-Addo but observed that Ghana as a country and its leaders have failed 62 years after independence, MyNewsGh.com has filed.

Although Dr. Adei considers the Akufo-Addo government as “unbelievable” and “excellent”, he bemoaned the fact that the country 62 years in existence has no infrastructure plan in place except a draft initiated by his predecessor Dr Kwesi Botchwey at the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) which he will rely on as the new head to operationalize.

On the Akufo-Addo government, he said:

“From what I’m seeing, I think they’ve done extremely well in trying to manage the macroeconomics, it’s unbelievable that they have been able to turn around almost every indicator from the negative to the positive.”

“People say we’re not feeling it in our pockets but any government that puts in money in your pocket without you working for it is a thief and yet people say it because people were stealing money. People were getting contracts which they were not working for and splashing money about, and, therefore, people felt good but how long can you do that?” He quizzed.

“The macroeconomics has been excellent. So, I think that they have tried to also turn the social around – health, education and those things. There is still a lot to be done but they have done that very well. I think the energy situation has improved but I must say that one they share it with the NDC because the dumsor was so bad they also started to do something except that [they lost power]. I think that Ghanaians now have some hope of the future. They are streamlining things in the harbour, I think in a short time, interest rates will come down because the interest rates must come down within the tens not in the twenties for people to be able to do business, so, the trend is on the good side.”

He was speaking on Class Fm with Benjamin Akakpo in an interview MyNewsGh.com monitored . Professor Adei stated that the country could have done better than it is currently doing if proper systems were put in place by successive governments.

But on Ghana as a country, he had this verdict:

“We could have done much better. As a nation we have failed in having a systematic agenda in which we have pursued step by step and our politics has been so bad that almost now every eight now four we start it all over again. We don’t have an infrastructure plan. I must saw my predecessor at NDPC, Dr Kwesi Botchwey had a draft infrastructure plan, I am going to look at it and see we will operationalize it and make it simpler to follow. We have not had a systematic agenda of turning our country around and as a result is almost like going back two forward, one step backwards. We haven’t got as much as we should have”, he observed.