Was the SONA a campaign message or a projection? - MP quizzes

Member of Parliament for Bia East, Richard Acheampong has questioned President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on his delivery of the State of the Nation Address to the country Wednesday, March 10, 2020.

According to the MP, he barely understood anything that the president read in his address.

Whiles addressing a question on the difference between the State of the Nation Address and a budget reading on Okay FM’s Morning show dubbed 'Ade Akye Abia' with Kwame Nkrumah Tikese, the MP said that “ we cannot even tell if yesterday’s address was a campaign message or a projection. When you think about it, you cannot even understand.”

Mr Acheampong asserted that, the president did not address the current state of the nation but instead, made projections for the end of the year.

“Why do you have to talk about something which is supposed to be at the end of the year when in actual fact, you are to address the current situation?

“What we wanted to know is the current state of the nation but the president was just talking about the future; like the ‘Agenda 111’ that says you are going to build a hospital, meanwhile we have not dug a foundation yet. You came to promise Bia East a hospital but you have not even paid for the compensation fee to put up that edifice yet you have added it to your ‘Agenda 111’ in the current state of the nation,” he added.

He emphasized that if the president claims he has performed well in his administration, why then are people struggling under his government.

“As we speak, you said Planting for Food and Job is perfectly working yet just last week, we saw our Burkina tomatoes traders having a press conference and calling for security escort. And they even threatened to stop conveying tomatoes if they are not being helped. We all hear on radio the numerous robbery attacks on these traders going on the country in recent times. If there’s enough tomatoes in the country, then why are the traders travelling to Burkina to get us tomatoes?

Mr Acheampong again said that if the president claimed in his address to the nation that the country had buffers, why then did he not fight the COVID-19 pandemic but rather had to allow foreign countries come to our aid.

“So who wrote the statement for the president? The page 3 (26) of his document stated that we had buffers from 2017 and 2018. So why could we not fight the COVID-19 pandemic that striked us within a month if we had buffers but instead took money from our own pockets to protect ourselves?”

“Is it that we don’t understand the buffers or what? If it had not been the help of the IMF providing us with drugs, we would have run away,” he stressed.