“They [NPP] have told all their communicators anytime you mention Mahama or NDC say incompetent. I hear Bawumia and co say incompetent Mahama administration. You never held any responsibility anywhere near presidency before. You do not know what it is like to be President. I will take that word from Kufuor or Rawlings because they have been there before. All of you guys have never ever come near the presidency and you stand there and say incompetent Mahama administration… What do you know about competence?,” were the words of then President John Mahama in a clear response to what he called the then opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP’s) propaganda to label him “incompetent”.
Mr. Mahama who was speaking at a gathering of the party’s ‘Changing Lives’ tour in the Greater Accra Region, implied that Dr. Bawumia [then running mate of Nana Akufo-Addo] and others lacked the capacity to criticize him [Mahama], since Bawumia had not occupied any position close to the presidency before.
Two years after the statement was made, Dr Bawumia rebutting to Mr Mahama’s description of Ghana’s newly launched digital property addressing system as fraudulent somewhat taunted the former President, stating that he [Mahama] should accept criticisms from him [Bawumia] since he now occupies the high office of Vice President of the country.
“I hope that in all humility, former President Mahama can now accept criticism from me since by the Grace of God I have now occupied the office of Vice President of the Republic” he said in his opening remarks before moving on to state that Mahama’s description of the National Digital Property Addressing System (NDPAS) is an evidence that he has no clue about what he was talking about and was rather engaging in “parroting propaganda.”
His comment has been described as ‘harsh’ by Political Science lecturer, Prof Ransford Gyampo, and highly criticised by former appointees of the Mahama administration including Felix Kwakye Ofosu, who said Dr Bawumia was behaving like a “heartless serial caller”; Murtala Mohammed who said he empathises with Dr Bawumia as he “has still not found the transition between a Vice President and a running mate. As a matter of fact, he is an apology of a Vice President.”
Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid, on the other hand, has defended Dr. Bawumia as he posits that, “If somebody calls you fraudulent, really, quite frankly you would be hurt and if you are hurt, you would have to get the hurt off your chest, and, therefore, to say that: ‘I need to get this response off my chest’, in my view, is OK.”
