Kwaku Azar defends Ken Attafuah over remarks on not hiring NPP executives
- Professor Kwaku Azar says Professor Ken Attafuah is right not to hire NPP fanatics at the NIA
- Ken Attafuah has disclosed that president Akufo-Addo barred the hiring of NPP members at the NIA
- He says the president wants to build apolitical state institutions
- His disclosure has sparked massive anger among the NPP footsoldiers
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Private legal practitioner, Professor Stephen Kweku Asare, popularly known on social media as Kweku Azar has come to the defense of the beleaguered Executive Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Professor Ken Attafuah, after the latter’s disclosure that he was ordered not to hire executives of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
In an interview with YEN.com.gh, Professor Azar argued that Professor Attafuah is the last person to “look down on anyone, as some are trying to infer from his remarks.”
Source: UGC
According to Professor Azar, “all he was saying is that the public service is politically neutral and works on meritocracy.”
“That is not a contested statement and is also taken directly from the NPP manifesto. The real problem that we must address is how to depoliticize our public institutions to make them work for everyone,” he added.
Professor Attafuah told a Kumasi-based radio station that President Nana Akufo-Addo barred him from recruiting any member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) at the NIA.
This is because the president wants to end the practice of staffing critical state institutions with party footsoldiers.
He said the president’s vision is to build a neutral public service and “does not want to leave a legacy of employing his party members and packing them into a particular sector.”
“Neutrality is one of the principles of the Public Service. We need political neutrality so we are doing what the law says we should do and the President supports it,” he added.
Professor Attafuah’s comment angered many in the NPP including Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, who called out the Executive Director of the National Identification Authority.
Otchere-Darko, the owner/publisher of the New Statesman Newspaper said the NIA Executive Director “had no business stamping his feet on the expectations and hopes of unemployed party loyalists with such reckless callosity.”
According to Otchere-Darko, Attafuah jammed a foot in his mouth and shot from the hip when the nozzle was aimed at his “own family jewels, so to speak.”
He called on him to apologise.
Meanwhile, the Volta Regional Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), James Gunu, took a dig at the president following reports that he spent GHC2.8million on his recent foreign travels.
Speaking in an interview with YEN.com.gh, Gunu said: “The president says one thing and does the opposite.”
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Source: YEN.com.gh
