One of the talisman figures of the Akufo Addo administration, Gabby Asare Otchere Darko, has proclaimed his under-fire cousin President, Nana Akufo-Addo, as a more resourceful leader than Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s iconic first president.
In a Facebook post that has earned him unsolicited advice to seek psychiatric evaluation, Gabby claims that President Akufo-Addo has done more in four years than the Osagyefo himself did in 9 years.
According to him, Dr. Nkrumah, who was Ghana’s first President built only 32 factories but Akufo-Addo has done more than that.
“Akufo-Addo has also embarked on an industrialization drive like never before. Yes, we always refer to the 1st Republic as the “golden age”. Nkrumah built 32 factories in 9 years, which became but a drain on the exchequer due through misalignment and mismanagement,” Gabby wrote.
“The truth is, far more have been built or fixed in 4 years under 1D1F under Akufo-Addo. More global automobile companies have set base in Ghana under Akufo-Addo than under any other Govt in our 64 years. There is more to come as AFCFTA takes shape and Ghana is at the centre of it. More money has been spent on the poor, vulnerable and to tackle unemployment than under any other Govt in our history.”
The post was in response to the ongoing #FixTheCountry campaign which the regime had tried to use the Police and the courts to muzzle into silence.
The #FixTheCountry campaign has been a vote of no-confidence in what is now perceived by many as the most corrupt government in the history of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, punctuated among other things, with the recording of President Akufo-Addo himself allegedly taking bribe from a Civil Servant.
Campaigners pushing the hashtag crusade for Ghana to be fixed have said that the Akufo-Addo government has been a failure on virtually every single front of statecraft, and has been most successful at state graft.
The cedi, the national currency continues to weaken against major trading currencies, the country is losing the fight against illegal mining because henchmen of the President and kingpins of the ruling party are alleged to have taken over the trade.
Amidst serious hardships, the government has introduced a slew of taxes and failed to stabilize the power sector so that a perennial power outage problem that the previous Mahama government fixed has suddenly returned.
Meanwhile, the government’s promises to build one factory in every district is not exactly panning out as promised even though the Akufo-Addo government has borrowed Ghana into a situation where the World Bank and IMF openly express fear it will soon become unsustainable.
Gabby Asare Otchere Darko’s comparison of Nkrumah to Akufo-Addo will come as a culture shock in a country where the citizens are rising up against the government. More so because Nkrumah is regarded as Ghana’s immortal best in the lineage of Presidents, having built not less than 80 factories and aggressively industrialized the country more than any other.