Akufo-Addo has failed in fight against corruption – Kwakye Ofosu

A former Deputy Minister of Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has failed in the fight against corruption, therefore, he should be voted out of office in this year’s elections.

He said the president when in opposition, carried himself as an anti-corruption personality.

However, in office, he has demonstrated that he lacks the will to fight the corruption menace even among his appointees.

Speaking on The Key Points on TV3 Saturday, August 15 with Abena Tabi, Mr Kwakye Ofosu said this year’s polls will be a referendum on the performance of the Akufo-Addo administration.

He believed that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has superior records against the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), therefore the largest opposition party will win the elections.

“Elections are a referendum on an incumbent government. It is for this reason that when Nana Akufo-Addo emerged in 2016, he didn’t have any record.

“He merely relied on a manifesto and some promises that he made. “There was a government in place that was implementing a manifesto. The argument then was that the government had made specific commitments to the people of Ghana and had not delivered and I believe the same has been made for this current dispensation and so we can make that comparison.

“I am happy to make that comparison of records because we have a superior record than the NPP,” he said.

He added: “What we ought to be assessing is the outcomes of the deliveries as opposed to the promises and commitments that were made by Nana Akufo-Addo. “President Akufo-Addo postured himself as a man with anti-corruption credentials but I have serious doubt about that claim because I knew that it was mere rhetoric. Now, in power, he had done everything to vindicate his critics and prove them right in terms of his conduct and approach to fighting corruption.”

He further accused the President of nepotism.

“We have identified 65 relatives of the President in his government and this is a clear violation of the commitment that he made that he will eschew nepotism and family and friends,” he said.

But responding to his claim also on the same show, a Deputy Attorney General, Joseph Kpemka, said this year’s elections will not be fought on rhetoric as the NDC is currently engaged in.

He said it will be based on the records of the four years of the Akufo-Addo administration as against the eight years of the NDC’s.

“The 2020 elections will not be fought on rhetoric, it will not be fought on how well you choreograph messages, it will not be fought on propaganda, it is not going to be fought on how people do name-calling and how you try very hard to smear people.

“It is going to be an election that will be based on the records of the two leading personalities in the elections.

“[For] the government of Akufo-Addo three years in office, all we are going to do is to tell Ghanaians what we have done.

“And then the former president who is setting the record as being the only former president to have contested another election, will come up with his records and then we do a comparison,” he said.

Regarding the claim that President Akufo-Addo is engaged in nepotism, Mr Kpenka said: “The claim that this government is the most nepotistic is the most unfortunate. It is a sweeping statement that cannot be true.”