The Executive Director for Community Development Alliance (CDA), Salifu Issifu Kanton has stated that the argument for African leaders to stay long in power is unfounded and will only lead to all the vices of bad governance one can think of.
He made the statement on Day Break Upper East Show on A1 Radio today, June 29, 2022.
“For me the argument for African leaders to stay long in power and saying that, that will be synonymous to development is a bogus story, is unfounded, it doesn’t work in Africa, in fact, it will only lead to theocracy, it will lead to cronyism, it will lead to all the vices of bad governance that we have come to know of,” Mr Kanton said.
He cited the case of Uganda where President Museveni has been in power for close to three decades and yet the country remains underdeveloped with the majority of its citizens living in poverty. According to Mr Kanton, three decades of rule is more than enough for any socio-economic transformation in any society.
“Regrettably the case of Uganda does not give credence to the notion that longevity in a position is synonymous with performance. That notion is completely dispelled,” he stated.
He argued that the Rwandan case is different because the country’s population and size are relatively small and President, Paul Kagame is able to have a firm grip on the people and is able to develop the country to a larger extent.
Mr Kanton admires the Asian Tigers model of development. He says “the level of development that I have admired so much is often referred to as the Asian tigers. I am talking about the cases of Singapore, Malaysia and all those Asian tigers. The transformation that was witnessed there is not just about the case of longevity, it is about purposeful, integrity, performance led leadership.”
Background
“We are fooling ourselves thinking of changing government every four years,” Ghana’s Ambassador to Burkina Faso, H.E Boniface Gambila has stated.
He made the statement when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show today, June 27, 2022.
He observed that four years is not enough for the implementation of any policy that would bring about development.
“If you look across the world, the countries that we point to as examples of growth and development, you find that governments stayed in for long. But we are growing, we are to develop and so we need a certain group of people when they have a certain vision for development, we need a kind of reasonable long period to say the government at that time reaches a certain threshold; then we say that this is a reasonable time to make a change.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
