Did Kufuor’s gov’t actually halve hunger? I doubt it! – NDC activist

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Created on Friday, 24 June 2011 00:00

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Did Kufuor’s gov’t actually halve hunger? I doubt it! – NDC activist

An activist of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Felix Ofosu Kwakye, says he has serious doubts that former President JA Kufuor actually played a role in halving hunger in Ghana as suggested by the awards committee of the World Food Prize.

Mr Kufuor and former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva jointly won the $250,000 World Food Prize for cutting hunger in half while serving as president of their nations, the prize organizers announced on Tuesday.

The Organisers described them as powerful examples who have set the gold standard for presidential leadership in tackling poverty and former President Kufuor used public and private sector initiatives to improve food security and reduce poverty. Ghana, with about 25 million citizens, was the first nation in sub-Saharan Africa, to cut hunger in half.

But Ofosu Kwakye, a fierce critic of the NPP, said he doubts whether president Kufuor deserves the credentials conferred on him by the WFP “because this is a man who headed…a party in 2000 that told us that rice importation which stood around $25 million (a year) at the time was unacceptable and that they were going to reduce the trend by making the Afram plains the grain basket of this country. [They won the elections] and by the time they left office in 2008, rice importation had shot up to $600 million.”

On the basis of this, Mr Kwakye who was speaking on Thursday’s edition of MultiTV’s political discussion programme, Majority Caucus said it is difficult for anybody to convince him that the former president played any significant role in the alleviation of poverty and hunger in Ghana.

“This attempt to use this award to create the impression that president Kufuor did something unprecedented in this country is a bit mischievous. Set against the manifesto promises that they broke, one cannot necessarily exalt president Kufuor to that pedestal but I am willing to accept as a Ghanaian that it is always better that if a Ghanaian is in competition with any other national, he wins the award so I am all for it,” he stated.

Kufuor challenged

Host of the show, Mr Stan Dogbe challenged Mr Kufuor to follow the example of his predecessor, Jerry Rawlings who donated the $50,000 he won from the same Hunger Award to the University for Development Studies (UDS), and give up the money for a course.

“My challenge to president Kufuor is that, well, your colleague donated his towards the funding of a university for this country, what are you going to use yours for? That is the challenge that I throw to you now. What are you going to use your money for? Would you also use it to support some educational project? Your party’s presidential candidate is talking about a certain percentage of GDP which he can’t even tell us would go into education so this is a challenge. Let’s see…whether he will be willing to give (up) half of it for some project,” Mr Dogbe stated.

Continuing with Tuesday’s topic, Exposing the lies of the NPP; Another reason to choose the NDC, the discussants also tackled New Patriotic Party flag-bearer Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s suggestion that if he became president, junior high school will no longer be the termination point for basic education.

Mr Felix, who is an oil analyst, said he was not surprised by the wacky proposal by Nana Addo because the NPP is noted to be extremely deficient in proffering alternatives.

“What Nana Addo went to say in the UK left me more confused than enlightened about what the NPP intends to do exactly. What you got was a combination of plagiarism, platitudes and vagueness. Plagiarism because this thing about making the secondary school system a part of the JHS system was an idea propounded by the CPP (Convention People’s Party) – I think it is an unworkable, untenable idea but with respect to the fact that it was the CPP that came up with it first, Nana Addo ought to have credited them and made the point that he was borrowing a leaf from the CPP. I say there is platitudes because if you come and tell us that education ought to be linked to the transformation of the Ghanaian economy, everybody knows that – since 1960 people have been saying this. I say vagueness because if you say that you are going to commit a certain percentage of the national GDP to education, you ought to be specific,” he stressed.

He accused the NPP flagbearer of engaging in empty talk.

For him, Nana Addo’s promise was simply one of the utopian promises which the NPP has a reputation for. The NPP, in his view does not take the Ghanaian public seriously.

SADA argument risible

The Majority Caucus Thursday was also used to correct what the discussants called lies and misrepresentations by Deputy Minority Leader, Mr Ambrose Dery, on Minority Caucus regarding the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).

Mr Dery, who is the Member of Parliament for Lawra/Nandom, had argued that the government was owing the SADA account GH¢ 500 million because NDC had promised to start the SADA project with seed capital of GH¢ 200 million with an additional GH¢ 100 million to be generated “every year for the next 20 years; on that score alone, they owe the SADA account GH¢ 500 million.”

But host of Majority Caucus, who is a Presidential Aide, Mr Stan Dogbe, accused the MP of lying as part of efforts to gain some media presence with the hope to enhancing his chances of being selected as the running mate to the NPP flag-bearer, Nana Addo.

“It is shameful when I hear particularly people who should know better [say things like these]. He (Dery) sat in Parliament, when the SADA Bill was brought to that house; they went through the Bill and looked at how the Authority should be set up, how the funding is going to be done, et cetera, et cetera. Until that Bill was passed by Parliament we did not have a SADA. The promise that we made was never that when we come to office we were just going to carry SADA – SADA is not a football that we were going to carry from somewhere and come and put down there, (and say) this is SADA,” he said.

He said the SADA project was a process and would achieve its intended objectives.

The Presidential Aide said Lawra-Nandom MP needs some advice on how to improve on his public speaking prowess.


Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana