President Akufo Addo appears to have been caught in a perpetual inertial over the horrendous road infrastructure in the country as he piles the blame on the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
On his recent tour of the Volta Region, the President heaped the entire problem of poor roads on the NDC, saying they were responsible for it, having been at the helm of affairs of the 4th Republic for more than 25 years.
“In the course of the last 25 years of the Fourth Republic, the opposition party, the National Democratic Congress has been the one in power. If we are looking for who to blame for the states of our roads, I think it should be clear to all of us, who has the responsibility for the state of the roads in our country today,” President Akufo Addo said much to the criticism of angry citizens.
Out of the 27 years of the 4th Republic, the NDC has ruled for approximately 16 years while the current ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) have ruled for approximately 11 years. Critics have therefore said the two political parties are to be equally blamed for their continuous refusal to effectively invest in critical social infrastructure in the country.
Meanwhile, critics have also wondered why three years into his administration, President Akufo Addo is still fixated on apportioning blame to his predecessors when he has had ample opportunity to correct the mistakes of the erstwhile NDC administration.
“The president today in the Volta Region should tell us how many jobs he has created in the Volta Region alone. He should tell us how many numbers he has added on and not what Mahama did and didn’t do, we are not interested,“ TV anchor and journalist, Nana Aba Anamoah fired at the President for his blame-game.
At the same forum in the Volta Region, the President assured the people that he was determined to tackle their road problems: “…we in the New Patriotic Party, we would not shed our responsibility, we will deal with the state of roads that we found when we came to office,” he said.
However, the President had given the people of Volta Region the same assurance more than three years ago without fulfilling his promise.
In October 2016, while on a campaign tour of the Volta Region, he told the people and Chiefs that the state of neglect on the Eastern Corridor Roads that run through the region was “scandalous”, promised to complete them as soon as he is voted into power. While Akufo Addo is repeating blame on the erstwhile NDC, residents in several regions in the country are getting increasingly agitated over the poor state of road networks in the country. In the past months, residents and road users in more than seven regions have mounted serious protests against poor roads supervised by the NPP administration.