Dr. Akoto-Osei sounds more credible than the desperate NDC minority

By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Until the 2017 Akufo-Addo Budget came up for discussion on the floor of the august House, there had been no talk of the New Patriotic Party’s having “stolen” the policy agenda of “One District, One Factory” from a largely visionless National Democratic Congress’ leadership. The fact of the matter is that the NDC has absolutely no track-record of any industrial policy agenda, including the nearly 20 years when the party’s founding patriarch, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, ruled the country with an iron-fist under the aegis of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta (See “Majority, Minority Clash Over 1-District, 1-Factory” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/10/17).

We also know that former President John Dramani Mahama’s much-maligned SADA project was shamelessly lifted from Nana Akufo-Addo’s Election 2012 presidential-campaign manifesto. And so it is not clear what the former NDC propaganda secretary and presently Member of Parliament for Keta, in the Volta Region, Mr. Richard Quarshigah, means when he talks about the Akufo-Addo Administration’s having plagiarized their development policy agenda. Indeed, as Dr. Anthony Akoto-Osei politely pointed out to the 30-something-year-old Mr. Quarshigah, for most of the 1990s, when the Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress singularly dominated the country’s political terrain and firmaments, Ghanaians painfully and shamefully experienced the literal quartering up or total destruction of their country’s industrial base via the IMF-World Bank-sponsored program called “divesture,” during which dark period virtually every significant state-owned enterprise was “Donkomized” or sold off at scandalous giveaway prices to members of the Rawlings government, including Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and her husband and partner-in-crime.

And so this arrant nonsense about the NPP’s having supposedly lifted the “1-District, 1-Factory” policy agenda from the Mahama presidential campaign is just that, sheer hogwash! If, indeed, the NDC operatives had this policy agenda in their record books or manifesto all along, why did such a bunch of power-hungry hustlers wait to be soundly beaten at the polls by Nana Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party, and not even complain while then-Candidate Akufo-Addo was publicly selling his policy agenda to Ghanaian voters all over the country, until the Akufo-Addo Administration began to show signs of being capable of successfully implementing the same? Somebody may have to sue these desperate and cynical NDC machine operatives one of these days in order to stop them from wasting the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money talking trash and abject mendacity on the floor of the august House of Parliament.

As the Minister for Monitoring and (Project and Policy) Evaluation aptly pointed out, the entire idea of the “1-District, 1-Factory” development policy agenda is rooted in the Kufuor Administration’s District Industrialization Program initiative operated under Mr. Alan Kyerematen, then-Minister of Trade and Presidential Special Initiatives. Which credibly explains why President Akufo-Addo would decide to revive and remarkably improve upon this old initiative with the man who pioneered its auspicious implementation. The NDC Abongo Boys would do themselves and the rest of the nation great good by learning how to creatively and productively use their brains, if they have any that are worthwhile, and stop making a nuisance of themselves and wasting the time and financial resources of those who sent them to the august House of Parliament to represent their interests and aspirations.

By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs