Politics is not an avenue for insults – Naana Opoku-Agyemang

The vice presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang has chided the increasing resort to insults by politicians in Ghana.

Speaking in a yet-to-be aired interview on the KSM show, the former Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast and a Christian Methodist by faith decried the tendency of politicians to wade into insults at a time that Ghanaians expect them to focus on real policy issues.

From snippets of the show shared on social media due to air on Friday, August 14, 2020, the Running Mate of former President John Dramani Mahama took the opportunity to link the effect of insults on the moral fibre of society and how that weakens the effect of policy.

She admonished politicians, saying “we shouldn’t get to the level where we think that to be a politician you must insult people. I don’t think so. When the fabrics of society get weak, none of the policies will help you.”

“Our parents didn’t raise us to go insulting people,” Prof. Opoku-Agyemang told host and veteran broadcaster Kwaku Sintim-Misa (KSM).

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has come under considerable public attention for reducing the dignity of his office into an office of insults by his frequent resort to insults.

On a Metro TV’s evening programme last week Thursday, renowned Economist and consultant to several global development Institutions Dr Nii Moi Thompson called out Dr Bawumia saying “his public utterances tended to demean and insult other people in a way that all the previous Vice Presidents never behaved.”

Member of Parliament for Bolga Central Isaac Adongo has also taken occasion to condemn the Vice President’s tendency to avoid policy issues and focus on demeaning language.