Why I clashed with Nana Akufo-Addo - Samuel Atta Akyea explains

Former Minister of Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea, has opened up about how he clashed with former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

According to him, while in the position as minister, he mooted the idea of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo building affordable houses for the people of Ghana.

He was of the belief that after all the legacies in education, agriculture, among others, the president needed to leave a legacy in the housing sector just like Kutu Acheampong did.

However, his proposals were kicked against by the then Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, who insisted that undertaking such projects would have swollen the country’s debt.

The private legal practitioner said he challenged the president and his finance minister in cabinet, but all his projects were not given the funding needed for their execution.

“The finance minister said my ministry would swell the debt of the country. Ken Ofori-Atta, who was the finance minister at all material times, said that. I used to strongly oppose him in cabinet on which ministry is lowering Ghana’s debt stock.

Obviously, my ministry was going to help the government because when we roll out the affordable housing project, and we sell the units, we can rake in some money. So eventually we were going to make some money. What was very serious was when they said we do not have the capital outlay to do serious housing.

"...I said maybe his priority is education because the Free Senior High School took a good chunk of our revenue, so that is what I thought he was looking at,” he said while speaking in an interview on Raw with Roselyn.

“Then another window came, which is the off-taker’s agreement. It had to do with serious investors in the area of real estate housing projects. They said give us lands and when you give us lands they will come and roll out the houses, and we will give you the free opportunity to buy them, the government could buy them but if the government is unable to do that then we engage the general public who are interested in the housing and then when we sell we will be able to rake in profit.

"There was even the opportunity that we could leverage even on the pension fund, so this whole commercial, cutthroat mortgages will be a thing of the past,” he said.

He said he thinks his ideas in changing the phase of housing in Ghana were not a priority for the president, and so they all did not see the light of day.