Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, a flagbearer candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has brashly declared that he will lead the NPP to break the “8” and move forward to make Ghana a prosperous country.
As a result, he has urged NPP delegates to choose him as the party’s flagbearer.
The former Ghanaian Minister of Food and Agriculture claimed to hundreds of party members that his impressive record as a United Nations Agriculture Economist for almost two decades and as Minister of Food and Agriculture of Ghana is proof of his abilities.
On Monday, May 29, 2023, a group of farmers and friends gave him nomination forms for the party’s presidential primary that they had chosen for him from the NPP Headquarters as a show of support for his presidential aspirations. Dr. Afriyie Akoto made this observation at the time.
He continued by saying that during his six years as the minister of food and agriculture, one of the most sensitive positions in the nation, he laid a solid foundation for the nation’s future prosperity.
For instance, he single-handedly launched the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA), a program that focuses on six tree crops, including oil palm, shea, cashew, mango, coconut, and rubber, and which has the potential to bring in US$12 billion annually for the nation.
Despite this, he introduced and led the government’s flagship program, Planting for Food and Jobs, which brought food security to the nation.
He is the best candidate for the top job in the Republic of Ghana because of these and the numerous other programs he started that had a major positive impact on the nation.
He took the time to highlight the nation’s ambitious plans, using agriculture as the engine for the other economic sectors.
The former Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwadaso noted that if elected flagbearer of the NPP and then president of the Republic of Ghana, he would give public funds priority to the agricultural sector in order to raise more money for the development of the nation.
“I used to work with the UN system for 18 years and I have worked around with all kinds of governments. I haven’t seen any government which has been able to develop its economy by borrowing both locally and externally. It is always the generation of domestic production and the alternative we have is agriculture production for export and domestic food security. So, it is the right thing to do and it is something that I am going to preach and preach and preach to everybody that if I become the President of Ghana, this country will use most of its public resources to generate the capacity that agriculture has so that we can get more foreign exchange and local currency to finance the development of other sectors of the economy”, he stated.
Then he pleaded with all of the party delegates to support him and vote en masse for him to win the NPP’s nomination and go on to become president of the Republic of Ghana.
“I will not let you down. I will go all out and clinch victory for ourselves and NPP and Ghana will become a better place for us”, he posited.
