Prominent figure of the New Patriotic Party, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has maintained that governance under the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) was a total failure and nothing to write home about.
According to Gabby Otchere, there will be disaster if Ghanaians vote the NDC back into power. He said NPP is still working to fix the shambled state the former regime left the country in.
He stated that, the NPP is doing a better job by laying solid foundations through government’s initiatives such as the Free Senior High School and Planting for Food and Jobs.
The legal practitioner buttressing his point with the Free SHS policy said that the programme has been one of the drastic measures used to prevent rising teenage pregnancy cases in the country.
“The facts are there, let me show you one thing that we are not taking full cognizance of. By September this year, you’d have had half a million – 500,000 young Ghanaians without secondary education who are now in classroom.”
“Imagine what would have happened five years from now. A big chunk of them would have had children,” he added.
He was happy to note that because of the Free Senior High School policy, “they are now in classrooms”.
On agriculture, he stated that 60% of cocoa farms in the Western-North were destroyed by the swollen shoot disease about a decade ago due to negligence by the former government.
He was appalled that farmers were left to their fate with little to no support from the NDC.
Gabby claimed that farmers have no cause to worry now because the current government has taken on the responsibility of doing the replanting, that is; cutting down the trees, doing the planting and even nurturing it for a while.
He was thus of the opinion that the NDC’s posture of always finding faults with the Akufo-Addo government and comparing his leadership to the John Mahama regime through social media was a fruitless course.
He nonetheless stated that the “bashing was important because even if this government is doing well, it can do better”.
“So help it, put pressure on it to do better [but] always remember that the alternative is still scary.”
Queried by show host on whether the NPP would have been under more pressure if the NDC had an alternative candidate for the upcoming 2020 polls, he replied in the affirmative saying, “I think so” but was quick to add that “it is not as if the NPP is going to compare its record to an NDC record”.
“They are comparing Akufo-Addo’s record to the person who just lost office and I think that’s a difficulty the NDC fails to recognize.” He noted.
