President Akufo-Addo has been criticised for setting up Ghana’s largest government with 110 ministers and deputies.
The National Youth Organiser of the Convention People’s Party Ernesto Yeboah has used the NPP’s campaign slogan ‘the Battle is the Lord’s’ to ground a belief that the President can do with a leaner government.
His criticism is part of an uproar on social media after the President released a list of 54 ministers of state and deputies to add to 56 others.
The figure is a 30% increase in the previous government’s size of 84 ministers and deputies. The president has created at least six new ministerial portfolios – Special Development Initiatives, Monitoring and Evaluation, Business Development, Zongo and Inner City Development, Regional re-organisation and Planning.
These new positions were criticised as unnecessary because overlapping functions with existing ministries.
The criticisms notwithstanding, the President in his fresh list has nominated a Minister of State for Tertiary Education and a Minister of Education.
The President has also nominated as many as three deputies in five different ministries – the Energy, Information, Finance, Agric and Local Government ministries.
For information and government communication, there is a Communication Director at the Presidency and a deputy plus an Information minister and three deputies.
Choosing a Biblical story to make his point, Ernesto Yeboah referred to Israel’s war with the Midianites in which God cut down an army size of 32,000 to only 300.
The story, recorded in Judges 7, says, “And the LORD said to Gideon, ‘With the 300 men who lapped I will save you.'” Israel routed its enemies to emphasise that it is not by numbers that a war is won but by the Lord.
Posting on facebook, the Nkrumahist wants the NPP to give true meaning to its 2012 and 2016 campaign mantra ‘ The Battle is the Lord’s’
“Even in the Bible GOD went for a lean Army to fight the battle. If you say ‘the battle is the Lord’s’ then let it be truly His”.
