Mahama’s relocation should bring efficiency-Sam Pee Yaley

A leading member of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a public interest lawyer, Sam Pee Yaley says the movement of the President to the Flagstaff house should promote efficiency.

He supposed that the Flagstaff house will be able to house a lot of appointees as well as executives who will be able to feed the President with the necessary information needed for nation building.

“I want to believe that the relocation of the presidency will promote efficiency because I want to believe that the facility is going to house a lot more people so that the President will have access to all the functionaries…” Sam Pee Yaley said.

President John Dramani Mahama on Thursday moved into the Flagstaff House; meaning, he will conduct formal government business from the Flag Staff House and no longer from the Osu Castle.

The Flagstaff House was used by Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah and it was reconstructed by the Kufuor administration to be used as the seat of government.

The project, which was funded by an Indian loan and grant, was inaugurated and renamed Jubilee House by former President Kufuor, but the NDC altered the name again to Flagstaff House after it took office in 2009.

The controversy surrounding the existence of the facility heightened when former President John Evans Atta Mills (of blessed memory) refused to move into it.

However, after a short ceremony on Thursday morning, President Mahama finally moved in.

Speaking as a panelist on Alhaji and Alhaji, a current affairs programme on Radio Gold, with host Suhiyini Alhassan, Sam Pee Yaley cautioned Ghanaians not to troop into the Flagstaff house ‘unnecessarily’.

“The proximity of the President now in the centre of the town should not open the floodgates for unnecessary visitors; people who have nothing to do…then they make the place another market place. The President is the number one person in Ghana and all of us as citizens will have to protect him. It was not for fun that some of us were raising eye brows on the security aspect of the place…but let see what is going to happen...” he indicated.