Atta Mills 10th Anniversary lecture held in Tamale
NPP, NDC urged to relive the values of the late president
Prof Stephen Bugu Kendie, a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast's School for Development Studies, has taken on government with respect to the management of the economy.
The Professor of Development Planning and Environmental Management lamented the spate of collateralisation of public funds during a speech delivered over the weekend.
He cited the government of former President John Evans Atta Mills as one that would not have resorted to what the current government was doing.
“Prof Atta Mills would never collateralise all state funds as is currently being done,” he submitted at the University of Professional Studies in Tamale.
Atta Mills lecture in Tamale
Prof Kendie was part of the special guests at a lecture delivered by Most Reverend Philip Naameh, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Tamale.
The clergyman was delivering a lecture titled: “Values of Professor Mills that Our Leaders should emulate to promote Good Governance,” at the maiden John Evans Atta Mills Memorial Lectures for northern Ghana to mark a decade after his death.
The lecture was organised by the John Evans Atta Mills Memorial Heritage, a body set up to honour the memory of President Mills, Ghana's third President (2009 to 2012) under the Fourth Republican Constitution.
“Professor Mills came across to me as a very decent person with a great sense of the fear of God. The key qualities that outlined the personality of Prof Mills was his humility, honesty, courage, faith, calmness, his peaceful and his tolerant nature,” he said.
“He was indeed a decent and polite politician, someone, who also had faith in the youth of our country.”
Government's collateralisation drive
The issue of collateralisation has become topical in recent months with the government's admission that revenue from the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) will be collateralized.
Prior to this, the Minority in Parliament and some Civil Society Organizations, CSOs, had in 2020 successfully pushed back against plans by the government to pass the Agyapa Royalties deal, which they said was aimed at collateralising Ghana's mineral resources.
The opposition NDC has serially accused the government of collateralizing most of the funds that it had set aside for sector-specific interventions before leaving office in 2017.
View his Timepath below:
The late John Evans Atta Mills