PROFESSOR Yakubu Saakah, an aspiring presidential candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), has described the over eighty ministers serving in the Kufuor administration as a drain on the national economy. According to the professor, “It is a shame for a country like ours with a population of about 22 million people to have such a bloated number of ministers.”
He said despite the efforts by the government to put the economy on track with investors marching to the country, people were still suffering. This, he noted, was because of the high number of ministers being used by the President, which was draining the economy.
He conceded that the macro level of the economy had improved, but said that should not be the basis for the president to appoint more ministers than necessary because the economy was still weak at the micro level.
Professor Saakah, who was speaking in an interview with The Chronicle in Takoradi, noted that for any government to rejuvenate its nation’s economy, it must cut down expenditure by reducing the number of ministers.
He also emphasised that for a country to make any meaningful impact on the lives of its citizenry, it was important for it to manage the economy to favour the vast majority of the people, but not a few individuals as being done by the Kufuor administration.
He therefore called on Ghanaians to vote for the PNC to implement better economic policies. He assured the people that a PNC-led government would not appoint more than sixty ministers so that that there would be enough resources to tackle other sectors of the economy.
The professor, who served as a member of parliament for West Gonja in the Northern Region and was the youngest minister in Limann’s administration, did not rule out the possibility of all Nkrumahist parties coming together. According to him, when he is elected as the PNC flagbearer, he would ensure that all the Nkrumahist parties have come together to face both the NPP and the NDC.
“We can still come together to fight hard to gain power because Ghanaians want a change, and not only a change but a change for Nkrumahists,” he said.
