The Founder and leader of the Progressive People’s Party, Dr. Papa Kwesi Ndoum claims after 60 years of independence, the best description one can find for Ghana is “underachiever”.
According Dr. Ndoum, Ghana has become a chronic underachiever, to the point that, the economy, health, quality of life is nothing to boost about adding that “even though the country can boost of people like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Azumah Nelson, Kofi Annan look at where we are now, a chronic underachiever”.
Citing reasons for the lack of progress made in the last 60 years, Dr Ndoum said the lopsided centralized form of administration practiced in Ghana is to blame.
According to him, the lopsided centralized form of administration has created four major problems for the country.
"Poverty of all types, poverty of the mind, low level of development, and the disconnect between the people at the local and committee level".
He said, “We believe that the local areas in the country remain underdeveloped mainly because the leaders, Municipal, Metropolitan, District Chief Executives are selected by one person, the president
“This selection, we all know is based mostly on political patronage and sometimes the people who become these Chief Executives are the very ones who were rejected by the people, some wanted to become MP’s, some contested primaries in their parties and lost” he said
Dr. Nduom and the Progressive Peoples Party is of the view that, successive government have made promises to amend the constitution to activate the election of MMDCE’s but unfortunately it has not seen the light of day.
“During the Atta Mills era, he set up the constitution review committee and one of their recommendation among some others was to amend the constitution for the election of MMDCE’s but the government then came up with a white paper that said that it does not accept the recommendation made by the committee that MMDCE’s should be popularly elected” he said.
Dr. Nduom was speaking at a press conference in Accra, Wednesday on the theme “The state of local government and decentralization in Ghana."
