Ho Airport was built to appease Voltarians for neglecting them – Amaliba

A foremost member of the Legal and Communications teams of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Abraham Amaliba has revealed that the Mahama -led administration built the Ho aerodrome in the Volta Region to pacify the inhabitants after the party neglected them.

According to him, the people of Volta Region which is the stronghold of the NDC party were angry at the government for failing to undertake developmental projects in their area and rather focused on doing massive infrastructural projects in the opposition party’s stronghold when the party knew it wouldn’t get any substancial votes from that area.

Lawyer Amaliba said, in a bid to win back the people of the Volta Region the party quickly had to come up with something to appease them, for which reason the Ho aerodrome was built but that was late in the day to change anything.

Three days before the December 7 elections, President John Mahama commisioned the uncompleted Ho aerodrome project which is estimated to cost $25 million and expected to be completed in 2017.

Many have criticized the construction of the Aerodrome in Ho arguing that it does not make economic sense, but government has justified it saying it falls in line with government programme to make Ghana West Africa’s aviation hub.

The NDC lost the general polls, both Presidential and Parliamentary in an election that the party was so confident of winning, due to the massive infrastructural development carried out by President John Mahama in his first term of office. President Mahama polled 4,713,277 votes as against President -elect Nana Akufo Addo who garnered 5,716, 026 votes.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Newsfile show, Lawyer Amaliba blamed the NDC’s painful defeat partly to apathy on the part of its grassroots.

“I think that we’re yet to do self introspection as a party and so I’ll not be able to tell the reasons for our failure, but I’ll not also say that I don’t hear what people are saying all over. One of it is apathy on the part of our grassroots, our grassroots were of the view that the party has not come to their aid and has not provided for their needs to the extent that in some cases the party was rather taking care of the needs of other people who’re not grassroots of the party.”

He continued:“For example in the Volta Region…the voters were of the view that do whatever you want to do Ashanti Region will never vote for the NDC, so you send a market there when we also need a market, when you send a military hospital there when we also need it, and you deny us some of these things then there will be apathy. Recognizing that, what did the government do? we quickly had to send some aerodrome to try to see if we can appease them in terms of what we did for the Ashanti Region but, it was too little to late. The grassroots felt neglected, felt their needs were not taken care of and they abstained from voting.”

Lawyer Amaliba added: “You notice from the results that Nana Akufo Addo won this election with a little over what he did in 2012, now you notice from the results that people abstained from voting for President Mahama but did not translate that into voting for Nana Akufo Addo. What is gratifying in this is that they are still available for us, it means that when we do the right things we’ll still get them into our fold. That for me is gratifying and I think leadership will begin to look at that and see how to appease them.”