National Chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has called for greater continuity in government, urging successive administrations to improve and build on programmes that are delivering results rather than abandoning them for political reasons.
He said Ghana’s development would be slowed if every change of government resulted in the cancellation, restructuring or renaming of programmes associated with a previous administration.
“A new government comes into office, and sometimes a programme associated with the previous administration becomes difficult to continue simply because of where it came from,” Mr Asiedu Nketiah said.
He was speaking at the fourth Bono Regional Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Awards in Sunyani on September 19, 2026, on the theme: “Ethics, Integrity and Impactful Journalism – Essential Ingredients for Societal Transformation.”
Mr Asiedu Nketiah said governments sometimes changed the name, structure and personnel of existing programmes and, in some cases, spent additional public funds only to arrive at almost the same outcome.
“We change the name, change the structure, change the people and occasionally spend more money arriving at almost the same place,” he said.
He, however, acknowledged that governments had a responsibility to discontinue programmes that were failing.
“Of course, a government must change policies that are failing, and nobody should continue a bad programme for the sake of continuity,” he said.
But where programmes were working, and public funds had already been invested, he said the better approach was to improve them and allow the country to benefit from the investment.
“A serious country cannot start every four years afresh,” he said.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah said Ghana’s improving economic conditions provided an opportunity for the country to move beyond recovery and focus on long-term development.
He called for greater attention to productive jobs, agriculture, industrialisation, infrastructure, skills development and the creation of economic opportunities around public investments.
He said infrastructure projects should be assessed not only by whether they were completed but also by the economic activity they generated.
“If we borrow money to construct a road, our interest should continue after the road has been commissioned,” he said.
He said the country should identify the economic activity that infrastructure was expected to support and assess whether that activity was developing.
Using the Bono Region as an example, Mr Asiedu Nketiah said the region’s agricultural production required complementary investments in processing, storage, logistics and access to markets to ensure farmers captured more value from their produce.
He also called for greater foresight in national planning, saying Ghana knew that its population would grow, more young people would enter the labour market and demand for energy, transport, housing and public services would increase.
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
