Citizen Watch, a policy think tank, has criticised IMANI Africa’s recent assessment of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government, describing it as irrational, promotion of mischief and a distortion of facts. 

IMANI Africa recently scored the Akufo Addo’s administration 48 per cent on the execution of its manifesto. According to think tank, the impact of what the President has achieved has not been felt by the larger population.

But Citizen Watch has said this is not accurate.

Reacting to IMANI Africa in a statement, Citizen Watch said, “Impact can only be measured by acceptance and readiness to identify that this is what you need. The Citizen Watch thinks that there is a need to reorient the people and also fashion out what we need as citizens.”

The statement signed by Francis Mensah, Convener of the group, further noted that: “For example one of the flagship programmes for this government is the Planting for Food and Jobs, which has successfully been implemented but what is the consumption uptake? It is the duty of the citizen to take up the consumption which is not the responsibility of the government.

“Also, the overpass at the Madina, which was constructed after a series of demonstrations, the citizens are still crossing the main road without making the use of the footbridge, is it the duty of the president to ensure the usage of that footbridge?”

According to Citizen Watch, IMANI Africa was acting out of pettiness and frustration.

“We want to sound a word of caution to IMANI Africa that their mischief agenda is dead on arrival,” the statement said.

“Wrong information travels faster than good news hence we need to set the record straight. We need to recognize that the president does not have the total solution to salvage this country; it is a collective responsibility of the people.

“We at the Citizen Watch are very grateful for the president’s ability to deliver most of his promises and we should begin to count our blessing one after the other”, the statement said.

Satisfactory progress

According to IMANI Africa, the government has achieved an overall performance on executing its manifesto commitment of 48.78 per cent.

This is satisfactory progress, according to the IMANI Manifesto Assessment (IMMA) Framework, although it sits in the lower bounds of this interpretation.

Disaggregating this performance, IMANI Africa said the NPP government scores, 54.35 per cent in the delivery of its commitments on the economy, 46.21 per cent on governance, and 46.44 per cent on infrastructure.

Government scored 39.13 per cent and 43.78 per cent on human capital development and social services respectively, according to the think tank.

However addressing the press last Friday, President Akufo-Addo disagreed with the outcome of IMANI Africa’s survey saying that his administration has rather achieved 72 per cent of its promises.