Nana Akufo-Addo has said President John Mahama keeps stealing his ideas, and has, therefore, elected to keep his plans for revitalising the “ailing” National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to himself, until the appropriate time.
“I dare not say them in public, because if I do, tomorrow, Mahama will take them as his own; every time I open my mouth to say something, the next day he parrots it. So, I have to be careful,” the three-time presidential nominee of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) said when he spoke at a fundraising event in Hartford.
The former Attorney General said under President John Kufuor’s administration, “we were responsible for the largest piece of social intervention in our history”, but added that the NHIS has “gone pear-shaped under the hands of Mahama.”
“We will pay a lot of attention to revitalising the NHIS. It is important that we do so, and find sustainable methods of making sure that the financing of the scheme is secure,” he said, adding that: “While focusing on the industrial development of Ghana, which will create jobs for the masses, we cannot ignore the basic social infrastructural needs of our country.”
Touching on his free SHS policy, which spearheaded his 2012 campaign, Mr Akufo-Addo said: “We have not retreated from the policy of including secondary education a part of basic education. We are committed to making access as widely as possible by making it free for children in our public school system. It continues to be extremely important for the development of the country.”
Mr Akufo-Addo said his government will put in place measures to address the 22,000 teacher deficit from the primary to senior high school level. “We can only do so by rapid economic growth and expansion, and that has to be the way forward. We are going to do everything within our power as a government to provide incentives for the private sector in Ghana to really take off, because that is the solution to the social and economic development of our country. That is what our party stands for and that is what we are going to do when we come into office.”
“I cannot accept that the countries of East Asia, can within a generation transform their lives from the same conditions as ours, and are today, in terms of economic activity and performance, first world countries, whereas we are third world players. I cannot accept that. We can do much better than our current circumstances.”
He added that a “solid, first class government, and a new direction for the people of Ghana. We will do it not for ourselves but for the current and future generations that are coming. We are going into office not to fill our pockets, but to provide service and leadership for our people. God knows they need it.”
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