Refrain from peddling falsehood :Omane Boamah tells Akufo-Addo
THE government has accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Flag bearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, of spreading falsehood about the cost of infrastructural projects in the country.
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A statement issued by the Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Omane-Boamah, advised the NPP flag bearer “to stop embarrassing himself and draw useful lessons from his previous blunders.”
Addressing the Sunyani Conference of the NPP last Saturday, Nana Akufo-Addo accused the government of corruption in the award of contracts by inflating the cost of projects.
“Nana Akufo-Addo had also made false and uninformed claims about the cost of the Kasoa Interchange Project without recourse to any evidence. In fact, it took a member of his own party to point out to him that his claim was unjustifiable,” the statement added.
Need for campaign of ideas
Dr Omane-Boamah said the NPP flag bearer was on a tirade just to throw dust into the eyes of the public.
“While it is very clear that the opposition NPP has adopted a campaign strategy that focuses on spreading malicious falsehood about government, one expected that the leader of the party would rise above such unwholesome politicking and embrace a campaign of ideas.”
“It is unfortunate that he has himself assumed leadership of his party’s campaign of calumny and disinformation. A few months ago, he peddled a blatant and deliberately packaged lie that government spent an amount of US$10 million to print presidential diaries. We are still waiting for his evidence to support the falsehood, which he peddled on an international platform.”
“The exposure of these claims to be untrue brought considerable embarrassment to Nana Akufo-Addo and we were of the view that he would draw useful lessons from these and refrain from such reprehensible conduct,” the minister said.
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Government achievements hit NPP
Dr Omane-Boamah drove home the fact that the recent publication of the government’s achievement had hit the NPP so hard that the opposition party had changed their style of attacks on the government.
“We note that ever since the government began the publication and provision of irrefutable evidence of its achievements, the leadership and membership of the opposition party have changed their oft-repeated narrative of non-performance to one of inflation of project cost,” he stressed.
Dr Omane-Boamah argued that the desperate moves by the NPP and its flag bearer were only meant to push aside the benefits the people would derive from the projects.
He nonetheless maintained that the performance of the government, as summarised in the book, ‘Accounting to the People’ was unassailable and could never be swept under the carpet.
Unparalleled investments
The minister touted the investments the government had made in all sectors of the economy and added that the NPP, perceiving the achievements as a threat to their electoral fortunes, had resorted to falsehood to take attention from the achievements but added that that would fail.
Corruption
Dr Omane-Boamah also noted that “the loud noise about inflation of project costs was also meant to give credence to the corruption allegation mounted by the NPP against the government, but pointed out that, “This is clearly an exercise in political rent-seeking.”
“This strategy by the NPP and their agents in the media is only a defence mechanism designed to avert scrutiny of their record and history in government,” the statement said.