December 8, 2012 was the saddest day in my political life – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says December 8, 2012, was the saddest day in his political life.

This was a day after he lost the presidential election to former President John Dramani Mahama. It was not just because he lost to an incumbent President Mahama, but also because none of his New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidates for the Upper West Region won a seat to represent their people in Parliament.

He said NPP “had not had one seat in the Upper West Region” adding that he was determined “that we reverse that situation and God willing on December 8, 2016, we had a different result”.

Mentioning some of the founding members of the incumbent party to the Upper West Regional House of Chiefs, Akufo-Addo stated that “some of them [NPP members from the region] had to suffer exile and detention” due to their belief “which they kept right until their last days on earth”.

“In 2016, I came to battle full of promises on the things I intended to do and I believe that it was for the people accepting those promises and also being affected by the poor governance of the then Mahama administration. It is the combination of these two phenomena that got the people of Ghana to vote for me,” he observed.

The President then asked the people of the Upper West Region to give him four more years by voting for him on December 7, indicating that he has proven to be a man of integrity.

“This year, the situation is different, I have had almost four years…...and therefore I cannot go just on promises for the future, but also to put in place my record as president of Ghana over those yelling four years,” Akufo-Addo said.

Highlighting some of the major projects undertaken by his government, President Akufo-Addo noted: “there are 2163 projects being executed in the region, out of which 1299 have been completed.”

The remaining 864, he said, were ongoing.

“Out of the 1299 that have been completed, 112 are in the educational sector, 48 in the health sector, 31 in the road sector, and 256 in the water and sanitation sector,” he explained.