General News of Tuesday, 21 May 2019
Source: citinewsroom.com
2019-05-21
Former President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama
Former President, John Mahama has accused President Nana Akufo-Addo of falsifying facts and figures on road contracts awarded by his government before he left office.
According to the NDC flagbearer, Akufo-Addo abrogated all such contracts and re-awarded them at exorbitant prices; hence he cannot fathom why the President will attack him over road projects.
Recently, Nana Akufo-Addo questioned the existence of the supposed unprecedented road infrastructure provided by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) prior to the 2016 general elections.
But responding to Nana Akufo-Addo in an exclusive interview with Citi News, Mr. Mahama said; “the President lied. I never said I had done all the roads in the country as has been reported to have said.”
“Every government comes and adds some. Everybody can feel that I was doing their roads for them. The list of the roads we were working on is there. It was this government that came and suspended all the contracts and stopped the contractors from working and two years now, they have not paid them for the work they did and so the roads have stopped.”
“Look at the Jaskian road that the President went to visit, we awarded it on contract. It was Nana Addo who came in 2017 and asked the contractor to stop work. That eastern corridor road was supposed to be completed in 2018. He came in and stopped all those works on the Eastern Corridor. The cost is even higher now than the award we gave. So he has re-awarded it at a cost higher than the contract sum. Now, he has seen the harm that has been caused in re-awarding it. There are a lot of inconsistencies in what the President is doing”, he argued.
Mahama’s ‘unprecedented’ roads still a mirage – Nana Addo
President Akufo-Addo called the Mahama government’s claims in 2016 as mere propaganda and said there was no truth in them.
“If there were truth in it, all the roads around would not be in this state,” he remarked.
He recalled that the former President, John Mahama said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate must have probably been sleeping to have missed the good work done on the roads.
Now, the Akufo-Addo government has said it will invest GHc 100 million of the Emergency Spot Improvement Project funds for significant road rehabilitation in the country.
“The unprecedented road infrastructure is a mirage. Everywhere I go people complain of roads, and therefore the claim can only be described as propaganda. But measures have been put in place by my government to address the problem and Akrodie, Goaso, Kenyasi, Hwidiem and others will their roads fixed soon through the Emergency Spot Improvement Programme and the contracts will be awarded soon.”
