He entered the Chamber of the House just when the debate on the financial estimates of the government was about to begin, and quietly sat down on the Majority side.
The Vice President had taken advantage of Article 111 of the 1992 Constitution which provides that ‘the Vice President, a minister or a deputy minister who is not a member of parliament shall be entitled to participate in all proceedings of the house, and shall be accorded all the privileges.
Until his nomination to partner then candidate Mills to contest the 2008 election, Mr. Dramani Mahama was the Member of Parliament for Bole-Bamboi in the Northern Region three conservative times, but yesterday was the first time he entered the house as Vice President to join in the debate.
‘I want to express how much nostalgia I feel in coming to this house,’ he told his former colleagues when he was given the opportunity to contribute to the debate for the approval of the supplementary budget statement.
The Vice President, whose visit to the House was not announced, told the parliamentarians that the economic management team, of which he is the head, had put prudent measures in place to ensure that Ghanaians realise the ‘Better Ghana’ agenda.
Touching on the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), Mr. Mahama admitted that significant commitments should have been made, but attributed the shortfall to the fact that the management team, including the appointment of Chief Executive Officer (CEO), was yet to be put in place.
He added that when the CEO and his management team are put in place, the government would make sure that sufficient funds would be made available for SADA to be able to operate effectively.
Mr. Mahama further told the House that since 2008, countries throughout the world had been going through economic crises, but those in Africa in particular, have shown resilience in pulling out of it.
‘Several countries in Europe are still going through the crisis, but incidentally for Ghana, in 2009, we saw depreciation in GDP from 7.7% to about 4%, which happily bounced back in 2010 to 7.7% of growth. I must say that our economy is growing positively,’ he said.
He rejected the accusations that the government had performed abysmally in the agricultural sector.
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