Reduction in numbers of ministers commendable – Prof Gyampo

A Political Science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Prof Ransford Gyampo has commended President Akufo-Addo for his decision to reduce the number of ministers in his government.

According to Prof Gyampo, although he is excited about the current reduction in deputy ministerial appointment, he wished for a lesser number of ministers in Akufo-Addo’s second term of office.

“For me I commend the reduction even though I still feel that the number could have still hovered around 45 and 50 but we are told its hovering around 80, it is fine I mean it’s better than the over 120 people who were appointed and all that,” he stated.

From his point of view, the reduction in the number of the ministerial nominees is the most important thing the President had done and that “the rest is the prerogative of the President.”

“Akufo-Addo is supposed to do things drastically that would help him leave a lasting legacy for Ghana as he goes for his second term and one of the drastic things that I was expecting that he would do will be that, he would reduce the size of his government and for me, he has done that,” he said on JoyNews Wednesday.

Speaking on The Pulse, Mr Gyampo said the size of Akufo-Addo’s administration during his first term of office was unprecedentedly high in the history of Ghana’s politics but did not yield good result.

“Well the 2020 elections were held and we saw that the result that I had described as a victory in the taste of defeat for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was indicative of the fact that the huge size government and the many ministers couldn’t do more, they couldn’t do much to ensure that the party did what it was expected to do.

“It was a victory with a taste of defeat for a regime that always said the battle is the Lords and yet assembled so many people as if the battle was meant to be fought by men,” he stressed.

He added that the huge size of government led to several critics from civil societies, opinion leaders and political scientist calling for a drastic reduction of the government but was “told that the end justifies the means.”