John Dramani Mahama is Ghana’s former president
• President Akufo-Addo has been accused of spending often to fly private jets
• The government insists the current presidential carrier is not fit-for-purpose
• John Mahama says leaders should be in tune with the sensibilities of their people
After months of accusations that the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has been spending profligately on private jets for his foreign travels, his predecessor, John Dramani Mahama, has finally broken his silence on the matter.
According to the former president, the mere fact that the larger populace continues to live in poverty, for the president to be on such a wild spending spree smacks of opulence.
“The ostentation and opulence that have characterized the spending of taxpayers’ money contrast sharply with the suffering of the people. The misuse of scarce resources on the avoidable creature comforts of the President and other leading officials must come to an end.
He added that the president, by this, does not respect the very people who put him into office, and with whose power he operates.
“It is an unpardonable show of disrespect and insensitivity to the plight of the suffering masses for millions of Ghana cedis to be spent renting luxurious aircraft for Presidential travels at a time when the state of Ghana has a fully fitted and airworthy Presidential aircraft that can ferry the President anywhere in this world. The staggering GH¢68 million spent on Presidential trips for the first nine months of 2019 alone constituted an unconscionable waste of very limited public resources at a time that the population was being asked to tighten their belts,” he said.
He added that to not be overly profligate, it shows that a leader understands the sensibilities of his or her people, and that is what he expects from the incumbent president.
“Leaders must be in tune with the sensibilities of the people. Resources entrusted into their care must be used judiciously for the public good, not for the excessive comfort of leaders. If this kind of waste was avoided, significant resources could be saved to address some of the more pressing concerns of the people,” he said.
John Dramani Mahama was speaking at an event to mark the end of his Thank You Tour of the country when he made these comments.
