19yrs Under Rawlings Was Waste of Time – Dr. Nyaho

Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe has described as “wasted time” former President John Rawlings’ 19-year rule of Ghana.

“For a whole period of 19 years, during the rule of Jerry John Rawlings, I don’t really see what this country benefited, I must say,” Dr Nyaho Tamakloe who’s a founding father of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) told Politics&Power Magazine.

“To me, it was a wasted time because if he had been able to achieve what he wanted to do, he would have been the first person to really transform this country to a higher level but nothing like that came.

“I mean, let’s face it, nothing. His tenure, rather, brew indiscipline and the corruption that he wanted to clear at that time, he was not able to do it. It’s gone worse now,” he added.

According to the former Ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro, under the erstwhile NPP administration of John Kufuor, corruption has since permeated the entire fabric of the country.

Reacting public clamour of a return of a Rawlings-like regime to propel the country’s development and fight against corruption, Dr Nyaho Tamakloe said: “It has not been able to transform the country. In anything at all, we are one step back.”

Ghana, he said at the moment, needs someone with a vision similar to Kwame Nkrumah.

Element vision under Kufuor

Commenting on the series of military interventions that Ghana witnessed since independence, Dr Nyaho Tamakloe said it was their duty to run a nation. “When we watch carefully, all the periods that they served things were rather getting worse.”

According to him, the emergence of former President Kufuor on the political scene came with it an element of vision that had eluded the country for years.

“…He took over from a military leader, he had a lot of challenges. Once again, the economy was bad and he managed it nicely, I must say. Kufuor managed it nicely, I must and we got to a level that surprised a lot of people in the world so we all thought once we are now taking off, unfortunately, he had to leave office so one can say, even in the era of Kufuor there was an element of vision,” he added.