The 2020 flagbearer of the All People’s Party (APC), Dr Hassan Ayariga, has described as erroneous, the Akufo-Addo government’s attribution of the country’s economic woes to the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to Dr Hassan Ayariga who was speaking on Angel FM’s Anopa Bofoↄ morning show on Friday, July 22, 2022, the economic crisis experienced in Ghana is an attendant problem of poor leadership.
He argued that though both warring countries contribute enormously to the world economies, Ghana should not be affected by the conflict because of the resources she is endowed with which the government can rely on to turn the fortunes of the country around.
According to a post by Bloomberg, “Ukraine is the world’s second-biggest grains shipper and Russia often tops the ranking for wheat exports. Together they also account for about 80% of sunflower oil trade”.
Russia alone is also reported to have been contributing 10 per cent to the world’s oil supplies. However, when the country invaded Ukraine, businesses worldwide which dealt with Russia drew back from investing in its oil sector, a situation which affected the prices of oil products worldwide.
But substantiating his claim, Dr Hassan Ayariga said “If you know what you are doing, the Russia-Ukrainian war should not affect you because as a country, we have all the resources”.
He continued: “Those [governments] who are talking do not even know what they are talking about. We have oil, we have bauxite, gold, timber, and farmlands, yet we import everything including toothpicks. Do we know what we are doing?”
“Even if we are importing wheat from Russia, is it only wheat we can use to make bread? Do we eat wheat every day? Don’t we have farmlands that we can farm rice, maize and all that?
“Why are we not doing that? Must we wait for Russia to send us wheat before we can survive? How many people eat oats in the morning in this country?
“We drink Koko. Let’s drink our Koko. You can use maize to do Koko; millet is not coming from Russia. We have cocoa; cocoa is not coming from Russia.”
The politician thus advised the government to desist from passing the buck for its failure to ensure the economic development of the country, adding that if they cannot manage the economy, “leave it for people to come and manage.”
