Pratt slams Akufo-Addo for justifying 'elephant size' government

Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. says President Nana Akufo-Addo's list of Ministers is as a result of enormous pressure mounted on him by his party members.

According to him, the President has been pressured to appoint 110 Ministers in order to apparently appease people.

To Kwesi Pratt, the people circling around the President are not telling him the truth and if they don't stop singing his praises; he will not be any different from other Presidents.

He advised government officials to stop being sycophantic and hypocritical and help President Akufo-Addo to make right decisions.

“Help him and tell him the truth because if you don’t tell him the truth, he will not become different from any other President . . . So, we should stop the praise-singing and hypocrisy. The President, himself, has told us that he knows that coming into government, he will be criticised and there’s an opportunity for that. The President, himself, has come out to say this; still praise-singing, sycophancy. Why?”

Analysing the President's logic, Mr. Pratt alluded to the erstwhile Nkrumah regime disclosing that in the entire 9-year rule by Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah; he never had a list of Ministers as Nana Addo's government.

Yet, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was able to deliver and undertake several significant developmental projects just with a smaller fraction of Ministers; he added.

To him, the President's justification for appointing 110 Ministers together with their deputies is unfounded.

“If we need lots of Ministers to undertake developmental projects, then Kwame Nkrumah would have got about 6000 Ministers. If we need numerous Ministers to work for progress, Kwame Nkrumah would have taken 6000 Ministers. Because there’s no doubt that when it comes to development, 9 years that he became President; the number of developmental projects he did, 9 years and no one has come close. But he had the lowest number of Ministers – 44,” he said.