The Communications Director of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Richard Ahiagbah, has taken a dig at former President John Dramani Mahama, describing his campaign launch as flat and lacked hope for the ordinary Ghanaian.

Mr. Ahiagbah said the former President’s campaign launch was characterized by the rehashing of old promises and ideas plagiarized from the NPP and other people.

Mr. Mahama who has declared his intention to contest the flagbearership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), launched his campaign on March 2, 2023, at Ho in the Volta Region.

Speaking to Umaru Sanda Amandu on Eyewitness News, Mr. Ahiagbah said, “there’s more of the old stuff that he said. The whole programme was flat, there was no enthusiasm. He didn’t say anything new, he just rehashed and put new words together, there isn’t any vision in the programme. I didn’t see any hope of information. There was a lot of misinformation, rehashing of old promises, there’s very little there to talk about”.

The former President did not credit a proposal made by the Executive Director of Eduwatch, Kofi Asare, on how government could make it easy for students to easily transition from Junior High School to Senior High School.

“We must, for instance, end the chaos that now characterizes the Computerized School Selection and Placement System for BECE graduates. As a first step, we should allow students to only complete their applications for SHS after they receive their BECE results. They will be in a better position to know their actual grades and match them with the cut-off grades and raw scores of the senior high schools they wish to be admitted to,” Mr. Mahama stated.

But reacting to this, Mr. Ahiagbah said, “if anything at all, there was a lot of plagiarism in parts of his speech. Mr. Kofi Asare talked about potentially remedying the challenges we have with the school placement, to have the students make their choices after they receive their results. The former President repeated that on his campaign launch without giving credit and that is a clear plagiarism there”.

Further touching on Mr. Mahama’s campaign theme, “building the Ghana we want,” the NPP’s Communications Director accused the former President of plagiarizing the African Union 2063 Agenda.

“If you go to the Africa Union’s 2063 Agenda, building the Africa we want, he just took the Africa there and put Ghana. We have a similar campaign that we are running, and he’s plagiarized all over without giving credit. But what is more injurious is the Kofi Asare bit. He just said it clearly as though it was his original idea,” he said.