THE NPP’S NANA ADDO ON BBC

BBC Presenter: The election on Wednesday will be Nana Akuffo Addo Akuffo Addo’s third attempt at winning the Presidency. *He’s lost the previous two consecutive elections with the New Patriotic Party.* As campaigns are drawing to a close, he tells the BBC’s Akwasi Sarpong why he feels 2016 is the year things will change.

Nana Akuffo Addo: The circumstances of the country, I think, are such that the ruling party has run out of credit. The performance has been poor. The management of the economy has been poor and it has meant a lot of difficulty for the Ghanaian people. Lots of people don’t have work, income levels are very fragile, cost of living is very difficult. Generally, power, electricity, utility, all these… There is a great deal of despondency across the country.

Akwasi Sarpong: Your opposite number puts a lot of it down to external shocks, it’s…

Nana Akuffo Addo: We’ve had all that.

Akwasi Sarpong: …shocks that reverberated round the world,

Nana Akuffo Addo: Next door to us…

Akwssi Sarpong: …the slump in commodity prices. They couldn’t do anything about that, could they?

Nana Akuffo Addo: Why, why is Cote D’Ivoire growing 10/11% a year consistently for the last five years while we have been consistently declining in our growth? What is the reason for that?

Akwasi Sarpong: What do you think the trick is?

Nana Akuffo Addo: The trick is the, the quality of management. The management here has been poor. And it’s also been bedevilled by a great deal of corruption. The two together make for a poor administration of the economy. Schools cost 170, 000 cedis to build by the private sector then over 500, 000 cedis when it’s being done by government.
If you have that kind of ratio in public transactions, the consequences are obvious – you don’t have the resources you need for the development.

Akwasi Sarpong: I want us to talk solutions. Ghana’s problem right now boils down to debt. External debt stands at $28bn, that’s according to the IMF and the World Bank. On the campaign trail, for example, you have proposed to build a dam per village, a factory per village, $1million spent on a sanitation project for 275 constituencies, that’s $275m. Ghana is broke. Where are you going to find the money from?

Nana Akuffo Addo: First of all, the developments, at the level of the village, at the level of the district are ones we intend to do with the private sector. *We are not necessarily looking at disbursements from state funds to establish these entities. We are looking at encouraging private sector operators to be able to do that.*

Akwasi Sarpong: Meaning what exactly, Sir?

Nana Akuffo Addo: *Meaning exactly that the factories that are going to be established will be established by Ghanaian entrepreneurs, private businesses. They will have the facilitations of government but it will be done by private, by-by private, entities. It’s not going to be government…these… We are not setting up state enterprises. On the contrary, we are very strongly opposed to the establishment of state enterprise. As far as that is concerned, that is a-an initiative that is going to be private-sector driven.*

BBC Presenter: That is the opposition presidential candidate in Ghana, Nana Akuffo Addo Akuffo Addo.
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Why should the good people of Ghana vote for Nana if he expects the private sector to deliver his policies? Better still if all this will be done by the private, then why does he need to be elected President before he accomplishes this.

The NPP’s promises are vague and unrealistic.

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