The Director of Communications for Bawumia’s Campaign, Dennis Miracles Aboagye has criticized the vote-buying comment made by former President John Dramani Mahama regarding the One Studnet One Tablet initiative.
Mr Mahama had accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of buying votes with the One Student, One Tablet initiative.
Addressing a student forum at the Wisconsin University in Accra, the NDC flagbearer said the government is issuing this policy to convince the students who are turning 18 to vote for the NPP in the December polls.
He stated that, “you bring a new curriculum, the children have no textbooks in basic schools for the last four years and you think that giving pre-tertiary students tablets is more important. Of course, everybody knows the political expediency.”
“The pre-tertiary students are going to register in May because some of them are going to be 18 and above. Some are 18 already and they are going to be the ones voting. So this is a gift to entice them to vote for the current government. It’s a bribe for them to vote for this government but I mean the students do not exist in isolation. They live in households and families,” Mr Mahama added.
But addressing a press conference in Accra on Tuesday Aoril 9, Mircales Aboagye said “The flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party announced that we, the New Patriotic Party, were going to distribute tablets to students of senior high schools in this country. The NDC in their usual impossibility character and posture came out to ridicule this announcement, hoping it will never come to reality.
“But on the heels of our hard-working Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the policy was launched, and distribution, as we speak, has started. Isn’t it unfortunate that the former president and the NDC, within the full-blown hypocritical parades, came to display their bitterness towards a policy and especially its beneficiaries who are all Ghanaians of this country?
“The incompetent former president, after promising to roll out and distribute tablets across this country and failing to implement this promise, comes to question the priority of the government to do the exact thing that he promised some 7 years ago and could not deliver.”
President Akufo-Addo while launching the initiative announced that 1.3 million tablets were going to be distributed to students under the Smart School Project.
The tablets, he said, were fitted with digital content to aid research, teaching, and learning.
Mr Akufo-Addo said “To distribute 1.3 million educational tablets to students in SHSs. That is one student, and one tablet under the Ghana Smart Schools Project. The tablets are fitted with digital content to aid research, teaching, and learning.
“At the tertiary level, Ghana is pleased to provide at a discounted price tablets and laptops to students and lecturers to facilitate academic [activities]… The government continues to seek innovative ways to do STEM and the FSHS policy.”