Governance expert, Dr. Richard Fiadumor has said President Nana Akufo-Addo is just reiterating rhetoric and does not believe in his comment at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC.
President Akufo-Addo admonished Africa Leaders to quit begging from the West to regain Africa’s reputation globally.
“If we stop being beggars and spend African money inside the continent, Africa will not need to ask for respect from anyone, we will get the respect we deserve. If we make it prosperous as it should be, respect will follow,” Mr Akufo-Addo said.
But in an interview with Starr News, Dr. Fiadumor while welcoming the message said the President’s actions are in contravention of his own message.
“…We all saw what the Presidential Taskforce was involved in, they were complicit. So we have a situation whereby we just say things but we do not put in the necessary structures to ensure that what we say or what we want to do is done or followed to the letter.
“So the President to me is not somebody that can be trusted when it comes to the comments that he himself has made. Because, if you now have to utilize the pension funds of labour, if you look at what happened with E-levy, Parliament passed the law before going around in the name of town hall meetings. So this is a President who simply does not respect Ghanaians, so if he’s talking that way for me as a governance expert I do not trust him. But what he said to the international community is a fact hundred percent and I support him on that score.”
Asked how African Leaders should take the message from President Akufo-Addo, Dr. Fiadumor responded:
“The call is good but the messenger is the one who cannot be trusted in this particular situation. As we speak the purchasing power of you and me as Ghanaians have dwindled further because inflation has hit 50.3%. We have resources in this country we can rely on to make sure people of this country do not go into this financial quagmire that we find ourselves in. We expect African leaders to take what the President has said and if they can do something about it they should do it. But in our context, our President cannot be trusted based on the comment he’s making especially so when we are currently up in arms begging the IMF to make sure the economy bounces back.”
Source: Starrfmonline.com