A Communication team member of the Movement For Change (MFC), Solomon Owusu has advised Ghanaians to ignore call by Atta Akyea for Ken Ofori Atta to resign as a minister for finance.

Atta Akyea on Citi TV a couple of days ago, advised the finance minister to resign based on two grounds; save his personal image and also that of the government.

Solomon Owusu speaking on Pan Africa television’s flagship political talk show “ALHAJI and ALHAJI”, asked Ghanaians to ignore Atta Akyea’s call since the call is not genuine.

According to the communicator, Atta Akyea’s call feeds into the broader strategy of the New Patriotic Party and the government of trying to white-wash Dr. Bawumia as not being the one that was responsible for the economic mess of the country but Ken Ofori Atta.

Mr. Owusu further explained that this whole strategy became paramount when the NDC gave the indication that they will prosecute the 2024 elections solely on the economy of Ghana and went ahead to relieve their parliamentary leadership last year and replaced them with Ato Forson who is an economist and Kwame Agbodza.

The indication that election 2024 will be solely on the economy got the NPP thinking and so held several meetings to find ways of distancing the Vice President from the economic mess. The conclusion of the meeting was that Ken Ofori Atta would have to be sacrificed so all blame on the economy is heaped on him.

The strategy also has it that when Ken Ofori Atta is removed, the replacement will be announced as someone that was personally appointed by Dr. Bawumia the Vice President and the flagbearer of the NPP. His successor will continue all stalled projects with the IMF second tranche that has been approved for disbursement as well as other funds that will come from the World Bank and other institutions amounting close to $4billion to paint the picture that now that Bawumia is in charge, things are happening.

It will be recalled that somewhere last year, Kate Gyamfua the Women’s Organiser of the NPP granted an interview on Peace Fm, an Accra based radio station where she tried very hard to distance the Vice President from the economic mess.

In that interview, the women organiser who seem not composed, went to the extent of telling listeners that the flagbearer who is the head of the economic management team never supported the E-Levy implementation by the government as well as Ghana going to the IMF.She went further to make the point that these two decisions were all that of the finance minister,Ken Ofori Atta.

The outburst of the women organiser was part of the bigger strategy of extricating the veep from the economic melee.

Unfortunately for the women’s organiser, the IMF’s own document,the Staff Level Agreement it reached with the government of Ghana on page two, mentioned the Vice President as one of the key people that engaged in negotiations with the the fund to conclude on the set of programs that qualified the country for any support which included increasing electricity tariffs and also imposing vat on life line consumers.

The later part of 2023 also witnessed the General Secretary of the NPP calling on the President to do a reshuffle.

The General Secretary’s call was also in line with the strategy of getting the finance minister out to satisfy their strategy.

The President, Nana Akuffo Addo has also recently called for an audit of the SML deal and do not be surprised to hear from the finance minister that he has resigned.He is not resigning because he wants to but is part of the government’s strategy of trying to clean a bad candidate of NPP.

Atta Akyea who kicked against the call by the 80 MPs who on the 25th of October 2022, called on the President to remove the finance minister can not all of a sudden call on the person he has defended all these while to step down.In fact at the time the 80 MPs from the majority side called for his removal,inflation was 37%,the cedi had depreciated 20%, debt to GDP had risen to 96%,fuel prices were rising at will etc.You kicked against his removal.Now that inflation is coming down,the cedi is stable because Ghana is not servicing its external debt,fuel prices are stable etc,on what basis will Atta Akyea call for his resignation.It shows clearly that apart from the politics of it and how to swindle the minds of Ghanaians into thinking that the flagbearer of the Npp who seem to be very unpopular in the country had nothing to do with the economic mess of the country.

The election of December 7,2024,will solely be fought on the credibility,competence and character of the candidates.The credibility and competence test will be run on Alan Kyerematen,John Mahama and Mahamudu Bawumia.

The Ghanaian will ask basic questions as to what happened to NABCo that was implemented by the Vice President, the dumsor regime that was led by John Mahama and the implementation Africa Continental Free Trade Area that was achieved by Alan Kyerematen to make an informed decision.

Ghanaians should therefore ignore the call by Atta Akyea as it is not genuine and only a means of white washing the NPP’S unpopular candidate.

By: Solomon Owusu (Comms Team member,  Movement For Change)