The NDPC was established and entrusted with the mandate to design concrete and achievable development plans, policies, and programmes tailored towards Ghana’s sustainable development, but those plans were left to “die on the shelves” while Ghana wallowed in a development quagmire.
“We should institute a law …, whether you like it or not, whether party A or party B you cannot deflect from that national growth trajectory ….”, Professor Elijah Yendaw, a Professor at the Faculty of Public Policy and Governance, SDD University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS), said.
He said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa on Thursday on the commemoration of Ghana’s Independence Day, on the theme: “Reflect, Review and Reset”.
Prof. Yendaw, the Director of the Centre for Migration, Security and International Relations at the SDD-UBIDS, attributed Ghana’s underdevelopment to the desire of successive governments to satisfy their political party’s whims to the detriment of Ghana’s development needs.
“One key institution that politicians were supposed to be listening to, working with, and ensuring that we have continuity of development programmes and projects is the National Development Planning Commission, but what do we see, they abandon all these beautiful development programmes and policies”, he explained.
He indicated that a law binding all governments to implement the NDPC’s development priorities would put the country on the right trajectory.
Talking about the theme of the celebration, “Reflect, Review and Reset”, Prof Yendaw indicated that it would encourage and trigger positive thinking among Ghanaians to support the President John Dramani Mahama-led government to reset the country and put it on a “sound footing” for development.
He observed that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s declaration of Ghana’s independence on 6th March, 1957 meant that Ghana was “dis-bonded from the colonial shackles” and to leap the country into a growth path – economically, politically, socially, and culturally.
Prof Yendaw, however, observed that Dr. Nkrumah’s “brilliant idea” of total liberation of Ghana from the control of the colonial masters and uniting Africa was short-lived by military interventions.
“Many of the development plans that Nkrumah initiated, some projects were finished, successive governments came in, some were abandoned, and some were continued.
So, we have had a very checkered history when it comes to our growth and development as a country, starting from the Nkrumah regime”, Prof. Yendaw lamented.
GNA
