Think Big - Bawumia slams Mahama

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has chided former President John Dramani Mahama for being among a section of Ghanaians who do not want to think that the country is capable of doing something better than the so-called advanced countries.

According to him, it is about time Ghanaians do way with the negative mindset that the country has to be behind always.

Making reference to the recently launched Ghana Post GPS Digital addressing system, the veep said, “Unfortunately, people don’t even want to think and believe that we can actually do things that are better than the more advanced countries,” – a remark obviously directed at the former president, who described the digital addressing system as ‘419’ (an expression for scam).

Speaking at a congregation of the University for Development Studies (UDS) at Tamale on Saturday, Dr Bawumia said the criticisms were misplaced.

He had earlier described Mr Mahama as “clueless” on the digital addressing system.

“Yesterday I read that former President Mahama described Ghana’s NDPAS as a 419 scam. When I read his reasoning for such a description, it was evident to me that he has no clue about what he was talking about and was just engaged in parroting propaganda,” he asserted.

The National Addressing System, which was launched in October this year, is in partial fulfilment of the government’s promise to formalize the Ghanaian economy.

It is also to address the challenges of addressing properties in the country as well as the difficulties that come with locating areas in the country.

But the launch of the system has since received mixed reactions, especially from the minority National Democratic Congress (NDC), who are refusing to see the positive side of the system.

Former President Mahama, speaking at the party’s ‘unity walk’ in Cape Coast recently, described the system as pitiful and embarrassing.

According to him, the GPS system is “freely available on our mobile phone” and there was no need for the government to launch it as “a national addressing system.”

But Vice President Bawumia has shrugged off the criticism, maintaining that the national addressing system is more advanced than what is being used in the United States and the United Kingdom – two of the countries with very well laid down addressing systems.

“Unfortunately, people don’t even want to think and believe that we can actually do things better than the more advanced countries. People have the mindset that we have to be behind them always but I say no, we can move forward and we can overtake them,” Dr Bawumia emphasized.

He said, “For me, and I say this very seriously, this national address system that Ghana has implemented is more advanced than the address systems that they have in London or the United States.”

He stressed that it was about time that the likes of former President Mahama begun to think that Ghana can be the pacesetter for the rest of the world to follow.

“You must have the confidence that you can do things that are better than what America can do,” he pointed out.

Vice President Bawumia pledged that the government would soon address the problem of graduate unemployment.

He said the government considers graduate unemployment as a national security threat, for which reason it should be solved, beginning with the recruitment of 100,000 unemployed graduates in 2018.

“I know you are worried about jobs. Nana Akufo-Addo is going to take action. We have announced in the budget that graduate unemployment is something that we are going to deal with.

“We are setting up the Nation Builders’ Corps [NBC], and next year we will be hiring 100,000 graduates into the Corps.

“This will mean that on the average 462 graduates will be hired next year for every district. It will make an impact, but it will not be the end of the story,” the veep underscored.