Professional Politicians Must Not Be Tolerated - Says Prof. Oduro

A senior citizen, Prof. Kwabena Konadu Oduro, has advocated a political arrangement in which any person claiming politics as his or her only profession would not be given the mandate by people to lead them.

He said the cause of tension and violence in the political arena could be attributed to many people calling themselves politicians and with no claim to any profession other than politics.

“Currently in Ghana, many people calling themselves politicians have no claim to any other profession than politics and that is the cause of tension and violence as such people believe that if they do not win political power, then that is the end for them,” he told the Daily Graphic in an interview.

Prof. Oduro, who is the Chairman of the Office of Accountability (OA), was sharing his personal views on the elections and maintained that “if one's claim to a profession is only in politics, then the person is not the right material for political leadership.”

He said the claim by some people that they were professional politicians had brought in its wake heated political atmosphere, in which all Ghanaians were “politicking wrongly.”

“Some Ghanaians are inciting violence in a bid to have the upper hand in their campaigns,” he added.

He proposed that time was up to institute a political system that would ban anyone identified for inciting violence from further participation in any political activity.

On the country's oil find, Prof. Oduro, who is a biochemist by profession, suggested the use of funds accruing from the oil into investments in solar energy.

He said although oil is a non-renewable source, solar is not.

Outlining how the country could go about the investment in solar energy, he suggested the use the country's bauxite for the production of solar panels that would also create jobs.

These would then be used in the districts for every household in the rural area to benefit from this source of energy.

He said the traditional sources of the country's energy like the Akosombo Hydro Electric Plant could be channelled into industrial use while the deployment of solar energy is built up from the rural areas to the urban until every household in Ghana was covered.

He said such an action would ensure that long before the last oil was drawn out, the country would have a solid energy investment in solar energy which was sure to be the last source of energy to flicker out.

Story by Caroline Boateng