Constitution must define Ghana's growth path -Nduom

Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom believes the solution is in the constitution of the country

The presidential candidate of the Convention People's Party (CPP) for Election 2008 says Ghana would substantially spur its growth if leadership creates a national development agenda guided by the constitution.

Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, who led in the preparation of the country Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), maintains the 1992 constitution has a stock of national aspirations that have for long been ignored by leadership, hence our current state of the economy.

“When there is a national cry, it comes from leadership, it comes from a certain type of leadership that is able to assert its will and make people do things because they believe in that person,” Dr Nduom told host of Super Morning Show Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah.

Dr Nduom said several development plans authored by various governments in the past, have gathered dust or their contents have not been actualized because of unnecessarily politicization.

He stressed that in as much as multi-party democracy is healthy, national development agendas must be sanctioned by all political parties and pursued diligently no matter which government is in power.

The business executive chronicled a plethora of strategies and plans that have been developed by different political administrations that, he said have tended to be the same, a good basis why the country, he insists, must push with a unified force for a turnaround.

“There is a converge of intent, there is a convergence of ideas, there is a convergence of where we want to go. When we all sit and talk, we basically talk about the same thing,” he said.

“Let us for once look at the common strands, the common themes, the common aspirations and move on,” he insisted.

A finance and investment expert Dr G.A. Pele, who also appeared on the show, talked about developing home-grown solutions that aim at improving the standard of living of the ordinary man.

Dr Pele believes Ghanaians must believe in their own solutions and establish that whatever any country would do for them is a mere adjunct to their own efforts.

He also advocates strict monitoring of development projects and programmes to ensure that they are properly executed.

“If we do have a locally-developed blueprint on why… or a particular standardized system we want to appropriate, let there be the element of supervision for that. That is a body that is missing,” he stressed.

The discussion was part of a special series on the Super Morning Show The Ghana Series, that discusses national issues.