Timeline to change Ghana: Akufo-Addo, John Boadu clash over 18 months or 40 years

Readers of MyNewsGh.com will recall in August 2016, President Akufo-Addo had vowed to change Ghana in 18 months when elected president. This has now been contradicted by the General Secretary of the party, who is saying 40 years is what is needed to change Ghana.

“I am promising you that within 18 months of a new government of the NPP, under my leadership, the face of our country, Ghana, is going to change. We are going to get out of stagnation and backwardness and move our country onto the path of progress and prosperity. We can do it. We, the Ghanaian people, have the capacity to change the circumstances of our lives.” Akufo-Addo had said.

These were the words of the 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the Jubilee Park in Tamale at the time, when he addressed a mammoth gathering at the NPP’s Northern Regional Rally.

This ‘new Ghana’, according to Nana Akufo-Addo, will be “a Ghana with opportunities for all, no family and friends, tribalism etc; a Ghana where everybody is taken care off. “We will have a society that is caring and compassionate and expresses solidarity. Nobody is going to be left behind. We are all going to march together, hands linked together, to that great future that beckons us, here in Ghana.” he promised.

But General Secretary of the governing NPP, John Boadu, has said that to totally transform Ghana, his party will need about 40-years of uninterrupted stay in office to transform Ghana significantly.

Speaking on Peace FM’s ‘Kokrokoo’, he said the NPP already focused on winning election 2020. “We are preparing towards 2020 and it is not just 2020 we are looking towards. We know if we are here for a very long time, the country will move forward.”

He cited the work of the Kufuor administration as proof of the NPP’s potential at transforming Ghana.

“We need not less than 40 years to run this country and bring it to a level where we will all be happy. If you look at President Kufuor, looking at our history from independence to date, what President Kufuor did for eight years; he reduced inflation, reduced interest rates…cocoa production increased, the budget deficit was reduced, we brought NHIS, we left so much in the reserves, there are so many things he did that if I am to list all his achievements, we won’t finish.”

According to him, “if Nana Addo had continued after 2008 and had taken the baton from Kufuor, and if another NPP leader continued from him, we would have really moved forward.”