NDC Member of Parliament for Adenta, Kojo Adu Asare, has posited that recent public utterances by General Secretary of the NPP, Lawyer Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth, pointing out that his penchant to speculate needlessly when he could easily verify an issue shows how incompetent he is, which if not checked, could be the NPP’s undoing in 2012.
He has therefore rubbished allegations by the opposition NPP that figures for the 2010 Population and Housing Census in the Volta Region and elsewhere might have been massaged by some unscrupulous elements at the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
The NDC MP said even though the mess created by the GSS is appalling, it is also equally disappointing on the part of the General Secretary of the NPP to make such a sweeping statement.
The opposition NPP raised eyebrows about the cancellation of the planned news conference by the GSS to announce provisional results of the 2010 Population and Housing Census and believes there is much more to it than meets the eye.
“There is a reason that they want to bloat the Volta Regional figures so that it comes closer to that of Ashanti Region…We are waiting with keen interest the figures that will emanate from the Volta Region… Long after the close of the process, there were some registrations going on in the Volta region and the explanation they gave was that it was a normal mopping exercise…they should be very careful,” Lawyer Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie warned.
But speaking on e-TV’s Breakfast TV Newspaper Review, the Adenta MP condemned the statement which he believes was in complete “bad taste” and a reckless assertion made by someone who he argues, should have known better.
To him, the opposition party is only trying to be mischievous by casting a dark shadow on the NDC government, and reckons such baseless allegations should rather be peddled by the youth in the party.
“Sir John’s voice carries a lot of weight so he has to leave some of these speculations to the young people. If he now doubts the competence of the Government statistician, then he is giving us the cause to also believe that the NPP was manipulating figures when they were in power; how can he doubt the competence of the institution which contains people who could be NPP members? ” he quizzed.