A political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo, has chastised president Akufo-Addo’s decision to appoint a whopping 110 ministers – making his government the largest in the history of the country.
President Akufo-Addo came under vicious criticism immediately the details of the size of his government were made public. Civil Society Organisations including the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) expressed dismay at the president’s appointment of 110 Ministers, arguing it “sets a negative record for a country infamous for its oversized ministerial teams.”
But the president came out to strongly defend his “unpopular” decision, explaining that the country’s enormous challenges require the staggering number.
“I don’t believe that my government in the Fourth Republic has big numbers in view of the swollen challenges,” the President stated and that a paradigm shift is needed to recover the ailing economy.
Professor Gyampo, however, believed the government’s size under Akufo-Addo is unprecedented.
“…We all know…and I have done a study looking at the various size of government from Nkrumah’s time up to this current regime and to have 110 ministers I thought was too huge a size of government,” he told Morning Starr host Francis Abban.
“It undermines the argument of efficiency…when you talk about good governance you are talking about the efficient and effective management of scarce resources such that it translates into tangible developmental outcomes reflected in the lives of the ordinary people. If you are talking about efficiency it is essentially using few to achieve more,” he added.
He said the huge size of the government in his view was an attempt to create a civil service within the civil service. “It is an attempt to set up a new administrative machinery of the state in a manner that makes the existence of civil service quite redundant.”
