Only competence delivers results, not hope — Bawumia
The running mate for the 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has argued that only competence can deliver results and not hope.
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Responding to President John Mahama’s call on Ghanaians to learn from the Black Stars who turned hopelessness into strength by hoping, Dr Bawumia explained that the senior national team’s ability to rise from seeming hopelessness to near glory at the just-ended AFCON 2015 was founded on competence and not just hope.
He was speaking to students of the Wa Campus of the University for Development Studies last Saturday.
Presenting his third State of The Nation Address before Parliament last Thursday, President Mahama traced the history of the Black Stars from 2006 when they first qualified for the World Cup final.
He recounted the embarrassing turn of events at the last World Cup in Brazil and the rise of the team from that event to near glory in the African Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea where they lost the final in a pulsating penalty shootout against Cote d’lvoire.
The President said, “We must not allow ourselves to be sucked into the vortex of cynicism and extreme partisanship. Like the Black Stars, let us fashion out of the jagged rocks of fleeting setbacks smooth stepping stones to greater laurels.”
But reacting to the comments, Dr Bawumia said the most important factor that determined the performance of any team was competence and not hope.
According to him, it was only competent players that could deliver results for a team, adding that a mediocre team would inevitably produce mediocre results.
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“Our Black Stars can be used as a benchmark for us to look up to because we have a Black Stars team made up of competent players in their own right. Competent players deliver results. A mediocre team will give you only mediocre results no matter the hope you have in them.”
“Teams don’t win just on the basis of hope. If a team has a coach who is not good and players who are not good, disciplined and committed, then of course everyone would be justified to be cynical about the chances of that team,” he said.
Dr Bawumia explained that it was for this reason that there were constant changes in the Black Stars and all over the world of football at the playing and technical levels.
“Teams win because they work at it. A team performs when it has a competent coach or management whose tactics work and good, disciplined and committed players. Players who are not doing well are dropped for better players who fit the needed requirements. New coaches are appointed to replace coaches who were not getting results. These are the critical factors to ensuring performance for any team, including the Black Stars,” he noted.
Posing a series of questions to the audience, who answered loudly in the negative, Dr Bawumia explained that the same way players and coaches are dropped, governments which missed golden opportunities to transform their economies and improve on the living conditions of the people should be shown the exit to pave the way for a competent administration to deliver the needed results.