The Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has said that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is using his family members to perpetrate corruption on the state under the guise of service to the nation.
Mr Mahama alleged that President Akufo-Addo’s brother, Edward Akufo-Addo, and his two cousins, Ken Ofori-Atta and Gabby Asare Otchere Darko, are some of the relatives that the President was “shielding” to divert state resources into private pockets to enable him to “go on a plush retirement”.
In an interview with Kwesi Pratt on Pan African Television (TV), the former President said such acts had resulted in a “broken economy” that now requires a change in leadership to help fix in order to improve the lives of the citizens.
“This Finance Minister, you know what he is interested in?” Mr Mahama asked in the interview that was broadcast on his social media pages and other radio stations across the country, “he is interested in frequenting the bond market because he benefits from it indirectly.”
“His company (Databank) is at the bottom of borrowing all these Eurobonds and he has borrowed $9 billion from the bond market in four years.
“Every bond he floats, Databank makes monies out of it through proxies and other things. This is clearly conflict of interest and the President knows about it but that is why he said ‘I am too old to be corrupt and I am not going to steal your money’ because he knew his relatives will steal the money for him.
“That’s exactly what is happening so that he can go on a plush retirement because Mr Ofori-Atta, Mr Gabby Asare Otchere Darko and his own brother will look after him,” Mr Mahama said.
NDC direction
Former President Mahama said under his leadership, his team managed to put the economy on a sound footing before leaving office in 2017.
He said the gains that were made and which should have brought prosperity to Ghanaians, had been mismanaged by the present government, “creating holes in the economy”.
“In 2016 we financed the budget from our own revenues. We didn’t borrow one cedi from the central bank, the first time in Ghana’s history. Everything we financed in the budget with in 2016 we did zero central bank financing.
“This had put the economy on a platform where if Nana Akufo-Addo had taken over with additional oil revenues, we would have continued fiscal consolidation with growth and you would have felt the prosperity in the system.
“Instead, they jettisoned everything and they decided to go on their own track,” Mr Mahama added.
Source: 3news.com|Ghana
