Kofi Akpaloo For President

A Thirty-Nine-year-old businessman and Ghanaian resident in Ireland, Mr Kofi Akpaloo, has expressed interest in becoming the president of Ghana and has announced his decision to contest the 2012 Presidential election as an independent candidate.

Mr Akpaloo, who contested the 2004 parliamentary election as an independent candidate in the Manhyia constituency and lost to Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor, made his intentions known at a news conference in Kumasi.

Well noted in Kumasi for setting up the “Presdel Susu Scheme,” which later collapsed a few months after he had failed in his parliamentary bid, Mr Akpaloo has promised to create wealth for people and introduce unemployment benefits for those aged 18 and above.

He accused the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of incompetence and voter deception and pledged accountable and transparent leadership, when given the nod.

He said the two political parties in government shared the unenviable fame for broken promises and failed policies and promised his leadership would be different.

Mr Akpaloo who describes himself as a chartered certified accountant said he would focus on job creation, tackle the “mess” in the public transportation system and improve the country's health facilities.

“Not less than 100 state of the art hospitals would be built throughout the country under my watch”, he said.

Even though he failed to highlight his past achievements at the news conference and tersely explained how he intends to push through with his plans, Mr Akpaloo said, he has “creative mind to invent and a competitive spirit to win”.

“Kofi Akpaloo believes he can change the fortunes of Ghana by helping Ghanaians everywhere to create wealth”, he said.

“You cannot go wrong for supporting Kofi Akpaloo’s candidacy for 2012 as the first ever independent President of Ghana”, he said.

He has consequently set up a website www.akpaloo2012.com, where he has listed his vision and indicated his employers as Doveson Lovell in Dublin, Ireland where he works as a Senior Managing Partner.

He is appealing for funds to support his campaign on the Internet.

When he was asked at the news conference in Kumasi whether he was not only interested in becoming famous and attracting media attention, he said he was seeking the highest political office on the command of God and did not believe in retribution.

He said to help implement his development agenda, he would inject efficiency into the revenue collection system and block leakages.

The churches would also be involved in the mobilisation of funds to support development.

He criticised the on-going National Identification registration exercise, labelling it as 'useless and fruitless.'

According to him, what was needed was to adequately resource the Birth and Death Registry to function more efficiently.

Among Mr Akpaloo’s listed pledges and campaign message is to ensure “an end of wasteful spending, introduction of child benefits payments, introduction of tertiary income support, pay unemployment benefits to job seekers, introduce GH¢60 old age support payment to people not receiving formal pensions and are above 65 years.

Others are graduate employment programme, compulsory six-year college education where he intends to merge junior and senior high school, provide affordable housing and accommodation nationwide, graduate special accommodation scheme, a guaranteed 25,000 postal service jobs in the first 100 days.

The rest are efficient transport service nationwide, minimum wage of Gh¢1 per hour, effective and efficient health service delivery, guaranteed prices to farmers nationwide and a highly motivated police service to help reduce crime.

He added that he would invest heavily in sports and would introduce a new football league where all the 230 constituencies would have to form a football team each to compete in the league.

Answering questions on the collapse of his “Presdel Susu Scheme” in Kumasi, which culminated in people chasing him for their money just after he had lost the bid for the 2004 parliamentary elections and his subsequent move to Ireland, Mr Akpaloo said some people deliberately hatched a plan to collapse his business.

“They wanted to kill me and they used the radio stations to tell people that I was using their money for politics hence people rushed to take their monies”.

“Imagine operating a susu scheme and all of a sudden everybody wants to take their money back. You would definitely collapse and not even the big commercial banks can witstand such a shock”, he said.

He said he was married and had six children.