Why does Akufo-Addo not travel outside Ghana with his chair? - Wilson quizzes
Crusaders Against Corruption member presents analysis on cost 0of transporting presidential chair
If this was a quiz, and the question was, ‘Which African president travels locally with his own chair and never when he travels outside his country?’ the answer would have surely been ‘President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.’
And while this information is common knowledge, a member of the Crusaders Against Corruption, Emmanuel Wilson, has given even deeper and more startling details about how much might be costing the taxpayer to get the presidential chair around with him on all his travels.
Speaking on an edition of Good Afternoon Ghana on Metro TV, the crusader explained that there is a dedicated V8 for conveying only the chair of the president.
He however wondered why the president only chooses to transport his chair within the borders of Ghana, and not when his travels take him outside the shores of the jurisdiction.
“When the president is traveling within Ghana, his convoy, there is one V8 which is dedicated for the carrying of his seat - the presidential chair or the presidential seat. Ironically, when he’s traveling outside the country, he doesn’t go with the chair but when he’s traveling within his people, he goes with the chair, for whatever reason, no one knows,” he said.
Emmanuel Wilson further gave a breakdown of what he projects to be the estimated cost that is expended on this rather unusual practice of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration.
In total, he said an estimated GH¢120 million is spent on just transporting the presidential chair every year, more or less.
“There is one V8 allocated for that. Have we looked at the cost involved in that? And I have done a basic calculation. If you have a V8, a V8 travels 200km, uses an average of GH¢1000 on fuel. If the president’s itinerary is such that every month he’s traveling an average of 50 times, what it means is that you multiply the 50 by the 1000 and you multiply that also by the 200km, and you multiply that by 12 – that is the number of months in a year. You are looking at GH¢120,000,000 just on a chair,” he added.
Watch him speak about it here:
Akufo-Addo in his infamous presidential chair