How Prez Akufo-Addo went from cool to cold

desmond frimpong

May 9, 2018 4:42 PM

Nana Akufo Addo's measured approach won him the Jubilee House but this is the time he lacked the 'fierce urgency of now'.

In October 1998, Nana Akufo-Addo competed for the presidential candidacy of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and lost to John Kufuor, the man who eventually won the December 2000 presidential election and assumed office as President of Ghana in January 2001.

Akufo-Addo was made chief campaigner for candidate Kufuor in the 2000 election and became the first Attorney General and Minister for Justice of the Kufuor era.

He later resigned resigned from the Kufuor government in July 2007 to contest against 16 candidates for the position of presidential candidate of his party, the NPP, for the 2008 elections.

Fast forward to 2016, Akufo Addo was voted for as the president of the republic of Ghana.

The man has almost always been cool and super diplomatic until he couldn't help it any longer with the US - Ghana military base saga in Ghana.

Akufo-Addo expressed his outrage at the defamatory comments from his political opponents who claim his government has sold Ghana’s sovereignty to the United States of America.

In a televised broadcast to break his long silence on the matter, the president said some front-line politicians are wallowing in the “largesse of the US and at the same time promoting anti-American sentiment to a populist constituency.”

Such persons he said are “running with the hares and hunting with the hounds” in a matter that has left the country divided.

“I will never be the President that will compromise or sell the sovereignty of our country. I respect deeply the memory of the great patriots whose sacrifice and toil brought about our independence and freedom. I have stood with you, the Ghanaian people, all my adult life, fighting for our individual and collective rights,” he said.

That was the President’s first commentary on the controversial military agreement between Ghana and the United States.The Ghana-US defence cooperation agreement gives American soldiers unimpeded access to certain key installations and in return, the West African country will earn $20 million by way of training of its soldiers and equipment.

desmond frimpong