An aide to the President, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, has said that President John Evans Atta Mills is not as inept as his predecessor John Agyekum Kufuor. According to him, the Mills government “is ten times, hundred times, thousand times better than the [erstwhile New Patriotic Party administration]” and that the people in this government are more serious than those of the former. Mr Vanderpuye was speaking on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana programme Wednesday, provoked by comments made by NPP National Women’s Organiser Otiko Djaba, who was a co-panelist on the programme. Madam Djaba had said that the government needed to de-politicise issues bordering on the security of Ghanaians when she was commenting on the alleged highway ‘Armed Robbery and Mass Rape’ saga, urging the government to show more seriousness in dealing with the case other than rubbishing it and attributing it to its detractors. The lady at the centre of the controversial story has been refused bail by an Accra Circuit Court and is currently on remand. “The people did not vote for the NDC to come and play games and to come and dismiss issues and to come and pretend that things are not happening…and that we are all happy…” Otiko said. She added that the “Government and its ineptitude is something that we should focus on and these are signs of it. If you cannot ensure that there is a certain level of safety in this country you don’t come and say that everything that people are doing is NPP…” But Nii Lantey Vanderpuye said that the high incidence of armed robbery in Ghana today stemmed from the secret importation of small arms into the country during ex-president Kufuor’s era. The freeing of armed robbers during the 2008 general elections by the Kufuor-led government has also contributed to insecurity in the country, according to the president’s aide. He was certain that the government, together with the Ghana Police Service, is doing everything possible to clamp down on armed robbery. “The [Mills] government has done more than enough, more than some people did in eight years to check the issue of armed robbery… because we believe in a more safe, secure, stabilized country,” Nii Lantey maintained. Story by Dorcas Efe Mensah/myjoyonline.com/Ghana