Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Member of Parliament for Ofoase-Ayirebi, has lambasted President John Dramani Mahama over the State of the Nation Address delivered last Thursday.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament, Oppong Nkrumah accused the President of spending too much time lamenting about the state of the economy instead of outlining concrete plans to fix it.
“Mr. Speaker, when a President during the State of the Nation’s address spends his time lamenting like he did in 2013 and like he did here last week Thursday, what he does is that he invites the remnants of the previous administration to also come and defend our record,” Oppong Nkrumah stated.
“In between the two, the real issues that you campaigned on, the things that the millions of young people who were singing are waiting to hear you deliver on, they get lost in the cracks.”
Oppong Nkrumah reminded President Mahama of his campaign promises, including tackling the cost of living crisis, high transport fares, and electricity bills.
However, he noted that the President failed to outline any concrete plans to address these issues during the State of the Nation Address.
“The President campaigned on the cost of living crisis; he campaigned that transport fares were high and were still going high and that if he’s allowed to come to power, he will roll out a program to tackle it,” Oppong Nkrumah said.
“Did anybody hear the President here explain how he was going to tackle the phenomenon of transport fares that are going up?”
He also criticized the President for dismantling some of the programs initiated by the previous administration, including the gold for oil program, which was aimed at bolstering the country’s currency.
“In fact, in the first two months of the President’s administration, what he asserted doing is to remove some of the pillars that helped hold some parts, some parts of the economy together,” Oppong Nkrumah noted.
“It’s not true that everything that went on in the last eight years was bad. It’s not true that everything that went on was good. There were pluses, there were minuses. What we have to be doing now is building on the pluses.”
Oppong Nkrumah concluded by urging the President to focus on fixing the economy instead of engaging in propaganda.
“Mr. Speaker, the President traveled the length and breadth of this country talking about unemployment,” he said.
“In fact, he promised the young people of this country that those who were afraid that if he won power, he would terminate their appointments should fear not. He will keep them. And that for every one of those jobs, records, for every one of those jobs, he will recruit two more people. He says he will recruit two more people. Shocking that when the President assumed office, the first thing he did was to terminate them.”
-BY Daniel Bampoe
