110 Akufo Addo Ministers: Musah Adamu is worried Ghana may lose donor support

A member of the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, Musah Adamu has pointed out the size of the Akufo Addo government is worrisome saying it seems Ghana has the largest number of 110 ministers in the world over.

The Assemblyman for Kwesimintsim Sofo Zongo laments that Ghana depends on support from tax payers’ money from donor countries who cannot boast of such huge burden on their resources. According to him getting further funding from them may be difficult.

“We depend on developed countries for donations to undertake certain activities in our country, and it is their tax money that they use to support us, and if they are managing with little numbers of ministers and we have ballooned our ministers beyond imaginable limits; you see even to get support from them would be difficult”.

Mr Adamu was commenting on the appointment of 110 ministers by President Nana Akufo to serve in his government which has received backlash from various quarters in the country.

The minority side in Ghana’s parliament has described the appointments as “elephant-sized” and has called on the President to reduce the number of appointees.

Some civil society groups, including CDD-Ghana and IMANI, have also urged Nana Akufo Addo to slash the size of the ministerial and deputy appointments. But the President sees nothing of it, defending that, the challenges facing the country are unprecedented and require that 110 ministerial appointments be made to address the challenges.

But Musah Adamu tells Melody News Joe Bright “you see that in this day and age, in the era of technology, when we are using fewer people to do things, we are now going back to the Stone Age and go for more to be appointed as ministers. I think it is not the best. It is going to be a serious drain on the on the national coffers”.

Mr Adamu further noted that even though the President did not promise Ghanaians a lean government, he did promise to protect the national purse, and that means using state resources judiciously. “Because each minister is going to take a salary, apart from the salary he is going to take a vehicle, a house, a house boy, a security-man and all those things…all these are costs”; he said.

He further explained that what the minsters do is not “rocket science’. “You see even some ministers’ speeches are written for them by technocrats”. He said ministers just help in policy formulation and the implementers take over, “you have technocrats in all the ministries, so you don’t need such huge numbers of ministers”.

The Assemblyman for Kwesimintsim Sofo Zongo further reveals that he thinks the President has a problem satisfying party members for roles played in the 2016 electioneering campaign. This he said has led to a “jobs for the boys” scenario.