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The Isaac Adongo-produced, economics and finance-empty speech read by John Mahama lacked the cutting edge that qualifies it for serious minds to be trooping around it with the view to discussing its contents.

The rather fancifully curated long speech talked about an issue which came as something strange looking at the one who read it.

The Adongo speech read by Mahama highlighted the ‘teeming number’ of Ghanaians who are unemployed and that, it stems from the failure of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration to put in the necessary measures to ensure that jobs are created for the youth, according to the document read to us.

John Dramani Mahama lecturing in a rather bombastic manner about high unemployment and the need to change that trend sent me back on a not-so-nostalgic journey back into time when he was Ghana’s President.

Under Mahama, the preacher of employment/unemployment, the rate of unemployment was so high that graduates had to form unemployed graduates association.

Under him, there was a freeze on employment into teaching, nursing and other key sectors of the economy.

To the extent that thousands of trained nurses and teachers had to be employed by Akufo-Addo between 2017 till now should speak volumes about the dire nature of the situation at the time.

His homegrown fiscal consolidation program became a nemesis to the thousands of youth who had completed school at the tertiary level.

Unemployment was synonymous to John Dramani Mahama. People were advised to go into the bushes, cut grass, package them in bags, ferry them to the roadsides and sell them as forms of employment.

Today, this man is on television projecting himself as someone with some messianic traits to turn things around.

Unemployment may be high but a lot of strides have been made to contain the situation. The 1D1F program and several other interventions have absorbed some of the unemployed youth.

A lot needs to be done, we must admit but it would have been worse if John Mahama were still Ghana’s president. Mr. Mahama should never ever make unemployment a topic in his speeches because it would be akin to Satan preaching to Jesus Christ to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand!


P.K.Sarpong, Whispers from the Corridors of the Thinking Place.