Corruption: Mahama 'squeaky clean' – NDC to NPP

Former President John Mahama is spotless when it comes to corruption, the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said.

At a press conference on Monday, 30 August 2021, the National Communication Officer of the NDC, Mr. Sammy Gyamfi, said unlike Mr. Mahama’s unassailable track record in the fight against corruption during his term of office, the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government has been “neck-deep” in graft.

“This is why Ex-president Mahama is calling on all of us to kick these greedy thieves out of office in 2024 to afford the next NDC administration the opportunity to hold them accountable for their many corrupt acts”, he told journalists, adding: “We cannot afford to give them four more years to cover up and enjoy their loot while the majority of Ghanaians continue to wallow in squalor and abject poverty.”

“Regime change”, Mr. Gyamfi noted, “is our only hope of holding President Akufo-Addo, Dr. Bawumia, and their appointees accountable for their stewardship.”

“It is the only way we can retrieve the huge sums of monies they have stolen from the state and punish them in accordance with the law,” he noted.

According to him, “our friends in the NPP know that most of them cannot pass the accountability test when they leave office”, claiming: “This is why they are panicking and desperately jumping over themselves to ‘break the 8’ at all cost.”

“And, this is why they are desperately trying to run down the hard-won reputation and integrity of President John Dramani Mahama, whose public image stands tall and continues to shine like a towering lighthouse,” he said.

He said: “As for the NPP and their corrupt surrogates, their cup is full to the brim and running over.

“Time has exposed their chicanery and criminal acts”, the lawyer noted, indicating: “Ghanaians are well awake this time around and have come to appreciate them for who they truly are: an incompetent, dishonest and corrupt bunch, who only came to power to enrich themselves at the expense of the state.”

He said, “they will not be third time lucky with lies and no amount of subterfuge and comical attacks they heap on the person of H.E John Dramani Mahama can hoodwink Ghanaians and keep them in power behind 2024.”

“We will not bore you with any response to the false and baseless corruption allegations leveled against the NDC and President Mahama by these NPP thieves who are busy looking for corruption classmates”, Mr. Gyamfi intimated, insisting: “All the stale and contrived allegations they rehashed at their last press conference addressed by their General Secretary have been discredited over and over again. Like the Akans say, ‘Yate abre’, to wit, we are tired of listening to these same old lies.”

He said five years after leaving office, Mr. Mahama “remains squeaky clean with unblemished integrity.”

“His impeccable record is there for all to see and shows clearly that, indeed, he came into the office to serve the Ghanaian people and develop this country with honesty, humility, selflessness, and patriotism.”

Till date, Mr. Gyamfi noted, “not a scintilla of evidence has been adduced by the NPP to substantiate any of the allegations of corruption they leveled against President Mahama when he was in office, including those made by no less a person than the opposition leader at the time, candidate Akufo-Addo that President Mahama had spent US$10 million on the printing of presidential diaries and inflated the cost of the Ridge Hospital, Kasoa Interchange, Kumasi Airport rehabilitation projects, among others.”

During his time in office, Mr. Gyamfi said Mr. Mahama “fought corruption head-on no matter whose ox was gored, including prosecuting his own appointees for alleged corrupt acts as he did in the GYEEDA case, a standard President Akufo-Addo has never and can never live up to.”

However, he said: “Unlike ‘The Mother Serpent of Corruption’, who has corruption embedded in his DNA”, Mr. Mahama “never shielded or defended any appointee of his, who was found to have engaged in corruption.”

“So high was his commitment to the fight against corruption that a Deputy Minister in his government who privately expressed a mere intention to quit politics if she made US$1 million was asked to step aside. His track record relative to the fight against corruption is unassailable and no amount of lies can change this fact,” the NDC said.