Take Trump’s speech as challenge to deliver – Joy urges African leaders

The independent presidential candidate in the 2016 election, Jacob Osei Yeboah, has urged African leaders to be challenged by the recent derogatory comments by US President Donald Trump to improve the deteriorating conditions on the continent.

Sharing his opinion on a radio programme, Mr Yeboah said although the words of the American President were vulgar, they represented the truth.

Thousands across the globe have condemned Mr Trump for recently telling senators that immigrants from Africa, El Salvador and Haiti were from ‘’shitholes.’’

The African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) have issued strong words to condemn those remarks by the US President.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and former President John Mahama have all registered their discontent on Twitter.

Following the backlash, Mr Trump has indicated that he was taken out of context.

Current affairs programme

Mr Yeboah stated on the Current Affairs programme that the public anger against the comment was justified but Mr Trump only spoke the truth: many parts of Africa were very dirty.

“So far as I am concerned, maybe Trump was not diplomatic because that language is vulgar. Aside from that, let’s look at it objectively and one can say that he is not far from wrong. If Ghana and most African countries are pleasant places to live in, we will not have our youth endangering their lives through the desert and being enslaved on another African country or find themselves on another African country facing xenophobic issues. And all of these are actually pointing to the fact that yes indeed most African countries are unpleasant places,” he said.

He concluded that, “Shithole means unpleasant place...the current NPP government has seen that filth is choking us and, therefore, elevated sanitation to the ministerial level. This is indeed an indication of the fact that we are being choked to death.”