A former Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, Koku Anyidoho, has described his party’s accusation of nepotism against the Akufo-Addo administration as a waste of time.
According to the Founder and Chief Executive of the Atta Mills Institute, to be able to fight the issue of nepotism very well, political appointees should be subjected to DNA test to ensure they are not biologically related to the appointing authority.
“Let us not stretch this nepotism thing too much. As a Christian, I [Koku] ask myself, Jesus Christ had 12 disciples, James and John were they not the sons of Zebedee. So when we are being confronted with hardships, no jobs, bad roads, bad infrastructure and we want to swim in seas of nepotism? I don’t buy into it," he said on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme, Thursday.
Mr Anyidoho’s comments follow the release of a list of some 51 persons accused by his party’s National Communications Bureau as friends and family members of President Akufo-Addo, occupying top positions in the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
Following the NDC news conference, the NPP, led by its National Youth Organiser, discounted the allegation of nepotism in the current Akufo-Addo administration insisting that the persons listed by NDC as family and friends of the President, do not have close ties with the president.
To Anyidoho, the attempt by his own party as well as the governing NPP, which he said had also tried to push the issue of nepotism before, could amount to insulting the intelligence of the Ghanaian public.
He told host of the show, Osei Bonsu (O.B) that: “If politicians want to convince us that nepotism and friendship will not be worked with again, then 2020 is down the road, so all political parties should put it in their manifestos, “that if they win the election, family and friends will not be appointed”, then this matter is put to rest, but even with that one, when you are in opposition and family and friends are supporting you, and you win and you ignore them, and you bring strangers, you will lose an election."