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“I AM FOR PEACE, UNITY AND PROSPERITY”
Nanan Akufo=Addo speaks to Volta Regional House of Chiefs
Togbewo, Nananom, Mamawo, novinyewo, medo gbe nami.
I am very happy to be here and I want to thank the President
of the House for giving me this opportunity to address
this august House of Chiefs. For sometime now, I have been
hoping to to meet with you and I was mightily pleased when
this week, after returning from my trip abroad, the President,
the famous Togbe Afede XIV, the Paramount Chief of Asogli
Traditional Area, indicated that this meeting would take place
today. Thank you. I am most grateful, Sir. I am humbled that
so many of you have made the time to come and listen to me.
Whoever said my friends were in single digits in this part of
the country!
I am Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate
for the New Patriotic Party. Hence my presence here. And in
coming here, I came with the lady who brightens my life, my
wife Rebecca, and whom I recommend to you, especially Mamawo,
for her shy but warm and engaging personality.
The Volta Region is home to many eminent people who were
leading lights in the various movements and parties that have
become today’s New Patriotic Party. Persons such as R G
Armattoe, Modesto Apaloo, Kodzo Ayeke, S G Antor, Rev
Ametorwobla, Kodzo Dumoga, S K Ohene, J Y Oseibre, Courage
Quashiga and many others. It is also the home of Sam Okudzeto,
Timothy Amesimeku, Agnes Okudzeto, Osei Nyame, Tommy Ametekpor,
and my fellow Legonite, Elizabeth Ohene.
It is well-known that the NPP has not fared well in this
region. But, it is also a fact, perhaps, not well known, that
this is one of four regions where our share of the votes has
been consistently rising since 1992. Indeed, the NPP got its
highest share of the popular vote in the Volta Region in 2008,
when I was first nominated to lead my party in the
presidential race. So, I think it would be fair and modest for
me to say aloud that the Volta Region has done enough to prove
to me, my party and the rest of the country, that she is
willing to adopt me as a true son.
The rest, I believe, is left to me, my vision, my commitment,
my party and our programmes to show to you that we seek a
genuine relationship. Thankfully for me, the good works of the
last NPP government in not discriminating against this region,
or any other region for that matter, offers a convenient start
for me. It is evidence of our sincerity and determination to
build a society of aspirations and opportunities for every
Ghanaian, regardless of his or her geography, ideology, or
biology.
But, I will be the first to admit that beyond the programmes
and policies of the NPP to develop every part of the nation,
the posture, attitudes and utterances of our party members are
critical to developing this hopefully growing bond between the
NPP and Voltarians.
I prefer to believe that our inability to jump the electoral
hurdle in the region has been because we in the NPP have not
done a good job at communicating our message. I say this
because I know that the NPP message ought to have fertile soil
in this region. This is the party that has always championed
the cause of Ghana as a land of opportunity.
We celebrate the fact that Ghana stands tall among nations as
having a rich society of diversity, tolerance and
co-operation. Ours is a society of multi-ethnic and
multi-religious diversities who have found the wisdom to live
in peaceful co-existence. What is left, however, is how the
leaders of this nation of manifest destiny can use the
prevailing atmosphere of peace, unity, diversity and harmony
to enhance the dignity and prosperity of every Ghanaian.
An interesting feature of our country is that you can find
every ethnic group in every region. Ghanaians have never felt
restrained by the place of their birth in determining where
they live or work in our country.
My running mate, the young, respected economist, Dr Mahamudu
Bawumia, said something interesting in the speech he gave on
Wednesday. He said, in our race for economic development, the
competition is not with each other, in other words, it is not
between NDC and NPP or Dagombas and Kokonbas, Fantes and Gas,
or Ashantis and Ewes, or Akyems and Krobos. The competition is
with China, with South Africa, Malaysia, Korea, India, Brazil
and other countries in the global economic space. We should
never forget this.
Of course, there is and must be a healthy competition between
political parties to give Ghanaians a choice between a
different set of ideas on how we develop our nation. But this
should be nothing more, nothing less than a competition of
ideas, commitment, competence and solutions. This competition
should never endanger the Ghanaian project.
Education and Skills
As you may be aware, I am determined to institute a free
Senior High School systemm and I wish to reiterate this
commitment here before you, because I know how dear the
education of children is to the people of this region. We need
to make Senior High School the required basic school for all
children in order to give them a fair chance in life.
In 2005, the first batch of Class One pupils to enjoy free
basic education was enrolled. This year, the 2012-2013
academic year, that group of children have just completed
their BECE (Basic Education Certificate Examination) and are
anxiously awaiting their results in the hope of continuing to
Senior High School. After having allowed these children free
access to basic education it would be a national tragedy to
stand unconcerned for many of them to be denied access to
secondary education because their parents could not afford it.
You, in this House, know better than most the tradition of the
whole family, the whole clan, the whole village banding up
together to send a bright young child to secondary school; you
have done it, you have been beneficiaries yourself.
People believe that if that one child is helped to make it, he
or she would become the instrument for pulling the whole
family/clan/village out of poverty. Often such children have
not disappointed. I am determined to ease that burden on such
children by allowing every child in every family, every clan,
every village access to free education from kindergarten to
the secondary level.
There are those who say it cannot be done. Just like there
were those who doubted our capacity to introduce a national
health insurance scheme. Leadership, as we know, is about
choices. I will choose to spend wisely and efficiently in
allocating resources to develop our children for a brighter
future. It is the best investment that any society of
conscience and of vision can make and Ghana ought not be an
exception.
It will be expensive but it is far too expensive now that we
allow so many young people on to the streets after Junior High
School without any skills for jobs. As they say, if you think
education is expensive, try ignorance.
My vision for this country is to build a society of
aspirations and opportunities for all Ghanaians. Building such
a society entails the provision of universal access to quality
education and health in an economy retooled for
industrialisation and value-addition.
A society that aims to transform itself into a modern
productive player in the global market must get its
educational policies right. An educated and trained workforce
will help transform our economy, an educated and trained
population will give us the confidence required to deal with
the rest of the world in the competitive economy. The
provision of quality education and skills training will
therefore be at the top of our agenda. And in talking about
education, let me say how glad I am that a new public
university is being developed in this region. I am committed
to the principle that every region in our country should have
at least one public university. Let me wish the University of
Health and Allied Sciences every success.
Transformation of the Economy
During the period of the NPP government, ably led by HE John
Agyekum Kufuor, Ghana finally discovered oil in commercial
quantities in 2007. An equal focus will be given by the next
NPP government to the exploration of the off- and onshore
possibilities of oil and gas in this region. We have two
options now: one, to treat the oil like we have done to gold
and allow it to be exported in its raw material form as crude
or; two, use this as a perfect opportunity to transform the
structure of our economy through industrialisation and
value-added commercial activities. I am for the latter because
we can no longer continue to rely on the production and export
of raw materials for our living as we have done for the last
century if we are to create jobs and prosperity for the broad
masses of our people.
My economic vision will focus on building an integrated
industrialisation programme, with a clear bias towards
supporting our small and medium scale enterprises with access
to science and technology, incentives and markets to make them
more productive and competitive. This means our small business
people will form the foundations of this new industrial
policy: And I will support them.
Ghana should be at the forefront of the industrialisation of
West Africa. We will add value to our bauxite by building an
integrated aluminium industry and export manufactured aluminum
products. We will add value to our iron ore by developing a
new iron and steel industry. We will add value to our new
found gas by developing a strong petro-chemical industry in
Ghana, using both private and public capital. The development
of our salt will be part of this new vision. Equally part of
this vision will be the development of the Volta Basin, which
a study by the Geological Survey Department in 2008, during
the NPP tenure of office, has shown to be a potentially rich
deposit of considerable minerals – cobalt, nickel, diamonds,
gold and hydrocarbons. I want to see a West Africa that is
working together to create jobs for its people; and providing
decent lives for its 350 million population and I want to see
Ghana being at the driving seat of that regional project. And
here I want to commend the house, under your leadership,
Togbega, for the initiative of signing a “sister-region”
co-operation pact with a province of China.
Agriculture
It is estimated that three-fifths (59.7%) of the people in
this region are in agriculture and related occupations. The
agriculture sector, therefore, is one area where success will
be felt by the majority of Ghanaians, in the form of improved
food security and dependable incomes for the large farming
population in the rural areas. However, over the couple of
years, the performance of this sector has been very worrying
because of its importance in our economy and in particular the
number of livelihoods that depend on this sector. The data
shows that rather than expanding, the agriculture sector of
the economy has seen steadily declining growth from 7.4% in
2008 to 0.8% by 2011.
Thus, the challenge is to apply the same vigour to tackling
the decline as we intend to do in education. The NPP sees
agriculture as a major wealth creation venture for the Ghana
transformation project.
Job Creation
The phenomenon of unemployment among the youth of Ghana is,
without doubt, the biggest threat to social peace. We ignore
it at our peril. We believe that bold initiatives must be
taken to address this problem. And in this respect, the
vigorous exploitation in this region of its mineral, tourist,
agricultural, salt and water transportation potentials will
make a big contribution to job creation.
An NPP administration is committed to creating the conditions
that will allow the private sector to flourish as the surest
way of generating sustainable jobs for the mass of our youth.
But we recognise also that Government has a duty to contribute
to the creation of employment opportunities, with the central
role to be played by the private sector.
Self-employment will be promoted with support mechanisms such
as access to credit, management training, and preferences in
public procurement to give hope to the hordes of street
peddlers, of kiosk owners, and of lotto and telephone card
roadside entrepreneurs.
Working together
Togbega, my own involvement with Voltarians goes a long way
back.
I recollect my first journey to what is now Volta Region in
1950. I was six years old and my father took me to Keta to
visit his good friend and fellow lawyer, Ben Tamakloe. On
reflection, they must have been really good friends because,
as I recall it, the roads were not good, but it was a
delightful journey for an eager, inquisitive young boy. Those
were the days when the great minds of that generation were
plotting to free our people from colonial rule.
I recall when in 1977, as General Secretary of the PMFJ, I
worked alongside Gen Akwasi Amankwah Afrifa (the bosom friend
of a remarkable son of this soil, Gen Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka),
my own uncles Paa Willie and Jones Ofori-Atta, Albert Adu
Boahen, Komla Agbeli Gbedema, Godfrey Agama, Obed Asamoah, Sam
Okudzeto, Johnny Hansen, Nii Amaah Armatefio, and others to
fight, with courage but without weapons, against the Union
Government concept of Gen Acheampong. We succeeded in helping
defeat the idea in order to return our nation to multiparty
democracy.
One of the highlights of my career at the Bar was the time in
1979 when I had the honour of defending the late Chief Justice
Fred Apaloo, who did his pupilage in my late father’s
celebrated Kwakwaduam Chambers, in the Supreme Court against
the attempt of the Limann government to remove him from office
in the famous case of Tuffuor vs the Attorney-General. I led a
group of young lawyers including the then youthful Tsatsu
Tsikata, in that case, and we worked successfully together to
win that critically important case for the independence of the
judiciary.
In all these, what comes out is that, when we work together
for a common purpose on the basis of commonly shared
principles, we succeed.
Databank is one of the most successful companies in this
country and I suggest that it is an example of how we work
best when we pull our resources together. This company was
started in 1990 as some of you might know by three young men,
Ken Ofori-Atta, my cousin, Keli Gadzekpo, the current CEO of
Databank and James Akpo, now elevated as Togbe Afede XIV.
I don’t think they stopped to inspect each other’s birth
certificates before they got together. No prejudice stood in
their way. They were three young men who saw an opportunity
and it did not matter where they came from, their ideas and
determination to work hard and succeed were more important.
Our prejudices hold us back like iron chains when they stop us
from recognizing opportunity when we see it. We must be proud
to celebrate our differences and even share the occasional
harmless joke about where we come from, but we should never
allow the richness of our differences to become a currency of
spite and hate.
Let us shout out loud, right from this great hall, to all the
four corners of the nation, to every man, woman, boy and girl,
a message that is understood in every language, by every
ethnic group in Ghana. Deka wor-wor! Deka wor-wor! Unity!
Unity! We must be united in our quest for development. United
in celebrating our differences. United in respecting each
other. United in tolerating each other. United in
understanding each other.
We have made many strides but equally so we have made many
mistakes, made many wrong turns politically, socially and
economically over the last fifty five years. However one thing
has always stood clear. We have a DNA as a nation that has at
its very core humanity, as exemplified in our national motto
of Freedom and Justice, and at the very least our unwritten
desire for peace and unity. This has stood the test of time,
even under the most testing of authoritarian regimes. Even
when many African nations that gained independence after us
tore themselves apart through ethnic conflicts, Ghana remained
united. Let us preserve this and treasure it, the Ghana
Project.
In my three or more decades in frontline politics and,
recently, in the course of my Listening Tour across Ghana, our
common values as a people, the commonalities of our thoughts,
fears, concerns as people and our desire for peace and our
hope for the future remain clear to me. In my subsequent Tour
of Hope, it is becoming even clearer how hungry Ghanaians are
for a message of hope and unity; for a leadership that will
deliver security and prosperity. There are bound to be
differences of opinions among us, but these differences of
opinion should not shake our allegiance to Ghana. Ghana must
be first and foremost in all our dealings and thinking. Our
nation’s peace, stability, freedom and democracy are more
important than anyone’s ambition, including my own.
I have dedicated myself to public service in all my entire
adult life, because I believe we can achieve far more for this
land and for all her people than we have so far realized and I
want to contribute to this collective effort. I believe deeply
that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we
solve them together - unless we build our nation by
understanding that we may come from different backgrounds, but
we hold common hopes and aspirations; that we may not look the
same and we may not come from the same place or speak the same
language, but we all want to move in the same direction -
towards a brighter future for all our children and their
children. A strong Ghana must be based on the strength of its
entire people. This is my profound conviction which will
always guide my conduct.
We must not allow our stories of national survival, our
stories of sacrifice, and our stories of unity to give way to
inflamed passions, tribally charged language and selective use
of state power.
Recently, when I was out of the country in the United States,
a great controversy occurred which created a great storm. My
party issued a statement on it and I fully endorse the
sentiments expressed by my party in that statement, which
binds all members of the NPP. The matter is now before court,
and I believe that the public interest demands that we allow
the matter to be resolved there, and not continue to fan the
issues generated by the statement.
I want to state here, though, with all the emphasis at my
command, that I do not have any ethnic agenda to promote, and
I will not condone any such agenda.
Since we embarked on our democratic journey in 1992 with the
founding of the Fourth Republic by, perhaps, the most famous
son of this soil, HE Jerry John Rawlings, our achievements
have been significant in many areas. They include two decades
of uninterrupted democracy and freedom. They include two
peaceful changes of power from government to opposition
parties in 2001 and 2009. They include elections that have
been hailed across the world as models for the rest of Africa
to emulate. They include having the closest election in our
continent’s history in 2008, without any major disturbances.
They include substantial improvements in our infrastructure,
poverty reduction and the introduction of social programmes
that have helped the poor.
Despite these achievements, as we approach our sixth election,
there are those who are worried that the centre seems not to
be holding. Even at the registration stage, there has been
violence leading to injuries. There have been statements that
have unfortunately aggravated ethnic tensions. As a result,
many have questioned our ability to have a peaceful election.
They have questioned the ability and the commitment of our
security forces to maintain peace. They have questioned the
fairness of our state institutions. They have questioned the
impartiality and fairness of our religious, traditional and
opinion leaders. They have wondered about the virtues and
vices of a free press. And finally, they have questioned the
commitment of our political leaders—including myself, to
peace.
I want to say, here and now, that I am unequivocally committed
to peace in our country. That is why in 2008 when I lost the
presidential election by the smallest margin in our political
history, and indeed in the history of Africa, I accepted the
verdict of the Electoral Commission without demanding a
recount or inciting my supporters, and thereby avoiding the
spilling of even a single drop of Ghanaian blood. My resolve
remains the same today.
I believe the fundamental solution to all the anxieties
connected to the 2012 election is for the rule of law to be
allowed to reign. It is maintenance of the rule of law, which
requires the enforcement of law and order without fear or
favour, that can guarantee us peace, security and justice. The
rule of law, properly so called, is gender neutral, colour
blind, non-tribal and non-partisan. The rule of law is the
glue that binds a free society together in peace and harmony.
All throughout our political history as a nation, from
colonial times to independent Ghana, from the Bond of 1844, to
the formation of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society in
1897 and to the formation of the first nationalist political
party, the UGCC in 1947, our gallant forbears only had one
thing in mind – to chart the course of our collective history,
irrespective of our ethnic backgrounds. Their objective was to
lay the foundations of our faith to defend, support and be
prepared to serve a free and unified nation. To them believing
in one nation meant not allowing their energies to be sapped
away by either the failures of the past or the challenges of
the day. This is the belief that I have inherited, which
drives my politics, my personal philosophy and my decision to
dedicate myself to the public service of Ghana and to seek the
high office of president.
I believe in Ghana’s rich diversity and unity. I believe in
the fortitude of the Ghanaian. I believe in Ghana’s manifest
destiny.
And so Togbewo, Mamawo, I look forward to partnering with you,
by the grace of God if elected president, to introduce free
quality senior high school education, industrialise our
country, including developing the resources in the Volta
Region and improving the road infrastructure in this region.
Togbewo, Nananom, Mamawo, let us work together to move Ghana
forward.
Togbe Afede XIV, President of the Volta Regional House of
Chiefs, and all you eminent chiefs and queen mothers, I thank
you sincerely for this opportunity.
God bless you and God bless our homeland Ghana.
NPP Directorate
May 4, 2012
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