Coalition of National Youth Organizers from five political parties said the economic lecture held by Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia on Tuesday November 2, 2021 was a springboard to launch his bid for the 2024 Presidential race.
According to them, “it is such a disappointment that the much hyped Bawumia speech, which was anticipated to give hope to the Ghanaian youth turned out to be nothing but self-praising and launch of the Vice President’s bid to succeed Nana Akuffo Addo as the next flag bearer of the NPP”.
The group led by its President Kofi Osei observed that the event which was widely circulated, was anticipated to give hope to the unemployed youth of the country, while comforting the suffering masses in general.
However, the opposite was what the Vice President delivered, adding that it became an opportunity for him to “hype a book he wrote some years back which did not receive the acknowledgement he wanted, so he began his speech by relaunching his supposed book all over again”.
“It is such a disappointment that the much hyped Bawumia speech, which was anticipated to give hope to the Ghanaian youth turned out to be nothing but self-praising and launch of the vice president’s bid to succeed Nana Akuffo as the next flagbearer of the NPP”.
Vice President Dr. Bawumia delivered an economic lecture on November 2, 2021 at Ashesi University where he outlined some achievements of the government in the area of digitization and other programmes that are yet to come on stream.
But Coalition of National Youth Organizers believed the event did not live up to the expected outcome.
“Dr Bawumia decided to bore us with things like the Ghana card, which was introduced by the administration of former president Kuffour, which was continued by the President Mills administration and concluded by the Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo’s government”, it said.
The group said instead of the Vice President dwelling on what government has achieved in the area of interoperability, it would have been better if he had spent same time telling Ghanaians plans to strengthened the agencies that are responsible for fighting cybercrime.
“Again he admits that alot of financial transactions are done online and a lot of Ghanaians are patronizing it, he however failed to tell us the modalities put in place to combat cybercrime and to assure Ghanaians that the cybercrimes we witness like mobile money fraud will be a thing of the past”.
As the chairman of the Police Council we were looking forward to hear from him how many Police Officers have been recruited and trained to Mann our cyberspace, the group quizzed.
Read full statement below
It is instructive to note that, most institutions like banks still refuses to accept the Ghana card as a form of identification.
It is important to note that, there has not been a former merging of the data on the Ghana card and other form of identification like the birth certificates, ATM cards among others.
Dr. Bawumia in his speech mentioned that, with the introduction of mobile money platform, it was discovered that there are 30 million Mobile accounts, this we doubt.
According to the Ghana statical services, the total population of Ghana is a little over 30 million people, is Dr. Bawumia telling us that almost every Ghanaian owns a mobile phone?
Again is he telling us that, the fact that one owns a mobile phone, makes them an automatic subscriber of the mobile money service?
Dr. Bawumia spent time talking about the inter-operability platform which allows one to link their bank account to their mobile money account.
What he failed to tell us, is how government is raising revenue through this means.
For every transfer of money from one’s bank account to their mobile money account / wallet, there is a service charge, Dr. Bawumia as the head of the economic team failed to tell us, how government is taking advantage to raise revenue.
Again it has become evident that the telecommunications Companies are now metamorphosing into banks and insurance companies through the digital platforms.
We would have love to know how government is generating revenue through this opportunity.
Dr. Bawumia admits that digitization has come to stay. He made reference to the fact that e-commerce is taking over from the traditional way of doing business.
Again he admits that alot of financial transactions are done online and a lot of Ghanaians are patronizing it, he however failed to tell us the modalities put in place to combat cybercrime and to assure Ghanaians that the cybercrimes we witness like mobile money fraud will be a thing of the past.
As the chairman of the police council we were looking forward to hear from him how many police officers have been recruited and trained to Mann our cyberspace.
We want to remind the vice president that most of the digital address issued still mislead people to cocoa farms and dead end roads as their final destination.
We were hoping that the vice president again will tell us that, computer programming is going to be introduce in our basic schools to show his commitment to a digitize Ghana, but all we heard were the intention to distribute laptops and tablets which will have the hardcopy curriculum programmed on it.
A holistic look at the much hyped but nothing new Bawumia speech event is nothing but a launch of his bid to become the next flagbearer of the NPP.
Signed …….✍?
Coalition of National Youth Organisers.
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