The Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Richard Ahiagba, has ridiculed and accused ex. president John Dramani of plagiarism in the speech he delivered at his campaign launch in Accra yesterday.
According to Richard Ahiagba, John Mahama is arrogating people’s ideas without credit to them and this was spotted in his speech yesterday when he copied some views of Kofi Asare, the Executive director of Africa education watch, without acknowledging or referencing him.
He said “I first heard Kofi Asare, the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, talk about allowing the selection of SHS to be made after BECE results are released. Former President Mahama used Kofi Asare’s idea without reference to him. That is plagiarism, plain and simple”. So, there are no new ideas there or visions, there is no hope there and there is, undoubtedly, no experience there to write home about.”
On February 19th 2023, Kofi Asare was quoted by Citinewsroom.com as saying that “In a bid to resolve issues regarding senior high school placements, government should allow junior high school graduates to select their school of choice after the Basic Education Certification Examination (BECE) results are released.”
Mr. Asare said such a move would help eliminate instances where potential senior high school students are denied admission to Category A or B schools by the computerised placement system because they failed to get the required grades to merit being admitted to such schools. He said there will also be less queues at placement resolution centres if his suggestion is adopted.
Speaking on the February 18 edition of The Big Issue on Citi TV/Citi FM, Mr. Asare said: “the computer will respect that you may have been outperformed by other qualified graduates depending on the results that the BECE produces so that is why you will always have an average of 30 percent of BECE graduates that have to go through self-placement.”
He added that “if students have an idea of their BECE results before selecting their schools, it will significantly, if not totally eliminate the issue of self-placement because, by the time you are selecting a particular school, you should be aware of the cut-off point, both by an aggregate or by raw scores so that you don’t get close to schools you know you don’t qualify for.”
In a related development, Mr Ahiagba said the NDC will find it difficult to resell John Mahama towards the 2024 general elections since there is nothing new to add apart from his expensive campaign launch.
“JM’s experience entails the mismanagement of the growing economy he inherited the ground and eventually having to seek an IMF fund in a relatively stable global environment. Ghana, under NDC and Mahama, vanquished the unprecedented growth potential owing to the oil find,” Mr Ahiagba stated.
According to Mr Ahiagba, the experience JM talks about was tried, tested, and disapproved. He noted that the former President did not offer any new economic ideas because he had none.”
JM’s campaign launch speech is, at best, a plagiarised motivational speech, vision light and massive on blame that makes one wonder if he has heard about Covid-19 and Russia-Ukraine”, he noted.
“John Mahama is arrogating people’s ideas without credit to them. I first heard Kofi Asare, the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, talk about allowing the selection of SHS to be made after BECE results are released. Former President Mahama used Kofi Asare’s idea without reference to him. That is plagiarism, plain and simple”. So, there are no new ideas there or visions, there is no hope there, and there is, undoubtedly, no experience there to write home about.”
Former President Mahama talks about experience. Honestly, it will not help him to keep talking about the experience because the experience we remember or associates with JM are those of incompetent management of the economy and the power sector, which destroyed businesses, jobs, and the hope of a young oil-producing economy at the time.
Richard Ahiagba indicated that Ghanaians concluded in 2016 that Former President Mahama had nothing new to offer,” and true to form, nothing new was said in his campaign launch speech”, he added
