In a 2015 New Year message to Ghanaians, the 2012 Presidential candidate of the CPP has noted that with a distressed economy and an energy crisis, relying on hopes and wishes to turn things around will just not do.

Dr. Abu Sakara wants Ghanaians to shelve the mentality of children who build their hopes on Father Christmas believing that good things come by simply wishing for them.

His recommendation to Ghanaians is to return to the basics of hard work and take bolder steps into turning the economy around.

In an advice to government, he said, the State must not sit back and allow the private sector to run wild.

 

Read the full statement below: 

 

I send my acknowledgements to Ghanaians at home and abroad for your contributions to nation building in the past year and wish you well as we begin the New Year.

It is a privilege and a duty to encourage all Ghanaians in their endeavors as we strive to build our nation. In a year of significant trials and tribulations it is even more important that we look to the horizon with hope for a new and improved condition for all Ghanaians.

The past year has been fraught with an economy in distress, made worse by an energy crisis that has remained unsolved. These two forces have served to deepen unemployment and increase living costs to the extent where the middle class have suffered significant erosion in living standards, in spite of the emergence of shopping malls. The distressed economy has also placed an even greater burden on ordinary workers. These challenges are but symptoms of a fundamental flaw in our strategy which relies an unaided, fledgling private sector alone to compete with giants on the global stage. This approach simply won’t do! and can’t do!

We must therefore not simply wish for better in the New Year as children wish to Father Christmas.  We must also boldly take the fundamental step of the State playing a more aggressive and proactive role in fostering, supporting and strengthening initiatives by our home grown private sector. This is where our productivity increase can come from and where the transformation by growth in the manufacturing sector can happen in our life time. Transformation is not just quantitative growth; there must also be a qualitative change that results in evolution of our economy. The State must not be apologetic in playing its proper role.

My message to my fellow country men, women and youth is that we must not despair. Even in the bleakest situation there is hope. We need only hold fast to the values and principles that bound us at the inception of our beloved Ghana - “All for one and one for all, in freedom and justice”.  If we abide as each other’s keepers we shall be good shepherds of the spirit of our nation. We shall therefore not only care, we shall also be bold to confront the rapacious lion of corruption borne of political patronage, communal nepotism and collective greed.

May God bless you and all of us in our dear homeland Ghana! 

Ayekooooo!

Afehyia Pa!