An activist of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Felix Ofosu Kwakye, says he has serious doubts that former President JA Kufuor actually played a role in halving hunger in Ghana as suggested by the awards committee of the World Food Prize.
Mr Kufuor and former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva jointly won the $250,000 World Food Prize for cutting hunger in half while serving as president of their nations, the prize organizers announced on Tuesday.
The Organisers described them as powerful examples who have set the gold standard for presidential leadership in tackling poverty and former President Kufuor used public and private sector initiatives to improve food security and reduce poverty. Ghana, with about 25 million citizens, was the first nation in sub-Saharan Africa, to cut hunger in half.
But Ofosu Kwakye, a fierce critic of the NPP, said he doubts whether president Kufuor deserves the credentials conferred on him by the WFP �because this is a man who headed�a party in 2000 that told us that rice importation which stood around $25 million (a year) at the time was unacceptable and that they were going to reduce the trend by making the Afram plains the grain basket of this country. [They won the elections] and by the time they left office in 2008, rice importation had shot up to $600 million.�
On the basis of this, Mr Kwakye who was speaking on Thursday�s edition of MultiTV�s political discussion programme, Majority Caucus said it is difficult for anybody to convince him that the former president played any significant role in the alleviation of poverty and hunger in Ghana.
�This attempt to use this award to create the impression that president Kufuor did something unprecedented in this country is a bit mischievous. Set against the manifesto promises that they broke, one cannot necessarily exalt president Kufuor to that pedestal but I am willing to accept as a Ghanaian that it is always better that if a Ghanaian is in competition with any other national, he wins the award so I am all for it,� he stated.
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