Famous Ghanaian actress and producer Yvonne Nelson expressed her regret for a photo she took with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo following his election victory in 2016 in a recently published memoir.
The outspoken Yvonne Nelson alleged that the president had fallen short of expectations in terms of general leadership and economic management.
The memoir reveals that shortly after the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its candidate won the 2016 elections, Yvonne Nelson and her friends went to see then-president-elect Akufo-Addo to offer their congratulations.
She claimed that the opposition won the election because at the time the country was experiencing a severe power outage known as “Dumsor,” which had negatively impacted small businesses that were heavily dependent on electricity and caused significant job losses.
After discussing her participation in the #DumsorMustStop protest in 2015, she continued: “A year later, the opposition NPP and its candidate won the 2016 election. The current National Democratic Congress (NDC) committed a serious sin when the power crisis and its consequences occurred. Dumsor had caused job losses and dealt the small business that relied on electricity but couldn’t afford alternative sources of power a fatal blow.
The victims of dumsor, corruption, and miscommunication were unable to forgive the NDC party at the presidential and parliamentary elections, despite the fact that the crisis was resolved under the NDC administration at a significant cost and through dubious procurement deals.
“The NPP, led by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was massively in both the presidential and parliamentary elections. Some friends and I went to congratulate the president-elect, Nana Akufo-Addo, with whom we took a photograph. It is a photograph I regret taking.”
She continued by saying Nana Akufo-Addo had not lived up to expectations despite being promoted as an impenetrable leader and the cure for political and public sector corruption.
“He was said to be incorruptible, and Ghanaians thought he was going to be the antidote to mass stealing at the highest level, which is euphemized as corruption. Unfortunately, for Ghana and those who trusted him, he has turned out to be a monumental disappointment whose government’s unbridled borrowing, corruption, and reckless spending plunged the nation into economic dumsor,” she wrote in her book dubbed ‘I Am Not Yvonne Nelson.”
