Freddy Blay Explains Away Volta Sidelining In Akufo Addo’s Administration

The National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is claiming that President Akufo Addo had made extremely few appointments from the Volta Region was because downsizing in government affected his ability to appoint officials of Volta extraction. 

Speaking after an interaction with the Volta caucus of the governing New Patriotic Party, Freddie Blay said the decision by the president to cut down his elephant-sized government and appoint MPs as deputy ministers resulted in the Volta Region receiving fewer ministerial appointments.

According to him, the Volta Region received one ministerial appointment because it produced one parliamentary seat for the governing party.

 “The President made it a policy to give deputy ministerial jobs to those who mainly are in Parliament, except very professional positions. Apart from the Attorney General and a couple of people, most of the deputy ministerial appointments went to MPs,” he said.

“You could see that Volta Region has only one ministerial position and that one went to the only MP from the region…it is a pity, next time I believe there would be more ministerial and deputy ministerial positions from this region. The party has promised they will work harder to ensure that we have more ministers.”

 Mr. Blay’s explanation is predicated on complaints that the Akufo Addo administration is generally anti-Volta Region.

This became a serious topical issue when the government’s antics of sending an unprecedented number of military officers to the Region during the new voters’ register and elections, in what critics described as an attempt to intimidate people from the area.

A number of NPP officials have described people from Volta Region as being Togolese.

 “Of course we have not had many seats as we had expected, we had only Hohoe, even then we are going to improve upon it and members have expressed their desire to work hard and improve upon the results of what we had,” Mr. Blay added.