I don’t claim to be more concerned about the communication situation in the NPP than any follower of the Elephant family but the apathy of the communication teams to the extent that the Okyenhene had to stand up in defence of the President culminating the resultant flak is unfortunate.
Yes, things are tough from the post pandemic political-economic realities and the Ukraine/Russia geopolitical upheaval which is biting the entire world and the situation might even get tougher in the face of reports of global recession.
In the midst of all that, President Akufo-Addo is investing in infrastructural development across the country. I have been following some of the projects and I am highly impressed with the ongoing works on the construction of the Maternity and Children’s Block at the Komfo
Anokye Teaching Hospital which had stalled for 41 years.
It will be recalled that this project commenced in 1976, but came to a standstill in 1979 only for the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government to bring reconstruction of the facility at 60% complete within a year.
The President has commissioned a 60-bed Asante Akim Municipal Hospital while 87 hospitals under the Agenda 111 project are under construction in various parts of the country.
The President also commissioned the €37.6 million Upper East Water Supply Project. This project is providing the people of Bolgatanga, Navrongo, Paga and its environs with 20,500 cubic metres of water per day, which is approximately 4.5 million of water per day, a three-fold increase from the 1.5 million gallons a day originally available to the Region.
Apart from Bolgatanga, Navrongo and Paga, communities such as Zuarungu, Zarre, Sumbrungu, Kalbeo, Gambibigo, Winkogo, Bongo, Yorogo, Pungu and Akomkongu will also benefit from the project.
These are some of the achievements among several others I cannot mention here for want of space that have caught my attention but strangely they are not in the news let alone touted by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) communicators. As a result, the President has become the target of an extraordinary disinformation and propaganda that p his regime as the “worst ever”.
The question therefore is: What is the NPP Communications machinery doing in the light of the developmental agenda of the government?
For my entire life, front-line Ghanaian politics has been an intense soap-opera, redolent with the ruthless cut and thrust of the political system. In many respects it is the triumph of propaganda over substance, and these seem to be playing out under the current dispensation.
Whereas the president has conclusively shown during the pandemic that the problems we face as a nation are all within our own control, and very much to do with the attitudes and the structures of our own governance, his political achievements are getting drowned by the propaganda rhetoric of his detractors resulting in so much damage.
It is, therefore, time for the NPP communication machinery to learn the right lessons from everything that has happened in the last few days and heed to the good counsel of the famous American theorist and father of Public Relations, Edward Berneys.
He advised that ‘it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.’
The good people of Ghana will have to begin to push back on the propaganda and appreciate the President’s efforts even in this difficult times.
Asks Alexander Nti-Appiah
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
