“Yesterday I read that former President Mahama described Ghana’s NDPAS as a 419 scam. When I read his reasoning for such a description, it was evident to me that he has no clue about what he was talking about and was just engaged in parroting propaganda.”

Speaking at an NDC unity walk in Cape Coast last weekend, the former President accused the Vice- President of embarrassing the government with the digital addressing system which in his view attracted a huge cost, when same could be accessed on Google Maps for free.

“How can you launch a Google GPS system that is freely available on our mobile phone and say it is a national addressing system? It is such a pity. Why will you embarrass the president so much? You go and take a whole president to bring him to come and launch a system that is 419,” John Mahama said.

Digital Property System

However, speaking on the importance of the digital property addressing system for farmers at the plush Pokuase Resort , the Vice- President took a dig at ex-President Mahama, saying “I read that the former President described Ghana’s National Digital Addressing system as a 419 scam. When I read his reasoning for such a description, it became very evident to me that he has no clue about what he was talking about and was just engaged in parroting propaganda. I actually had a good laugh.”

“Let me therefore take this opportunity to educate him and others who may think like him about Ghana’s landmark digital property addressing which has been achieved in less than one year, something his government could not do in eight years,” Dr Bawumia narrated.

Dr Bawumia said this when he delivered the opening address at a consultative forum for the development of a marshall plan for agriculture in Ghana at Peduase.

He veered off the main address to respond to comments made by former President Mahama during the Unity Walk of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Cape Coast last Sunday.

Criticise constructively

“I should note that propaganda did not help former President Mahama when he was in government and it is certainly not going to help him in opposition. We welcome constructive criticism but before you criticise, please take your time to know what you are talking about otherwise you would be sadly exposed as being ignorant of simple facts as in this case,” he added.

Dr Bawumia explained that the NDPAS was a national database system that provided the digital address for every landed property in Ghana.

Basically, he said, every 5x5metre property had a unique digital address on the grid with region, district and postcode.

Under this system, he went on, 16.1 billion addresses had been generated for the whole of Ghana relying on surveyed data from the Lands Commission and the Latitude and Longitudes to generate postcodes and addresses for every square inch of Ghana.

The NDPAS, he said, came with the National Address Registry to keep records of all citizens on where they registered as their office and residential addresses.

“The Platform comes with open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to allow third party application developers integrate into the system to be able to translate and use the digital addresses to help facilitate transactions,” he added.

The Vice President stressed that it was important  the NDPAS was independent of Google and any other mapping tool.

“Google will not give the postcode, region or district for a particular location for example. It will not give you a register of addresses for every user. Banks for example cannot confirm an address by going to Google maps but they can do so through the NDPAS for registered users,” he explained.

He said it was very important to distinguish the NDPAS from the applications that were developed to use the system adding that “we should not confuse the system with the applications.”

 Uniqueness of Ghana’s Digital Address System

The Vice President said many had indicated that there were other digital address systems in the world but posited that those did not detract from the fact that what Ghana had, was something pretty special.

“None of the digital address systems in the world focus on local relevance in the same way that the GhanaPostGPS platform does. The GhanaPostGPS platform relies on Surveyed data to provide addresses. That means when you request your address, the platform makes reference to your district and region before determining your address, unlike other platforms that just use mathematics to calculate and assign an address,” he elaborated.

Cost of the National Digital Address System

Dr Bawumia related that Ghana was undertaking a project to implement a NDPAS and that the cost of the project as advertised was GH¢9.9m or $2.3 million (VAT inclusive).

He, therefore, said it should be noted that that amount was the total cost of the project, not just the app. For those like former President Mahama saying this could have been delivered for free, please take note:

“How could anyone claim that this project could have come for free? Would the free givers have given us free public education, servers, firewalls, house embossments, training and smart devices all for free,” he questioned.

Dr Bawumia said for former President Mahama to claim that Ghana’s NDPAS and the accompanying GhanaPostGPS app was a 419 scam demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the system.

Rather, he said, Ghanaians had been witnesses to 8 years of former President Mahama’s governance as vice president and president and knew what 419 scams looked like.

Scams under former President Mahama

Dr Bawumia said the NDPAS “is not your 419 GH¢200 million SADA Guinea fowl and tree planting scam, is not your 419 Smarttys Bus Branding scam, is not your 419 $23 million runway at Kumasi Airport, is not your 419 GH¢ 952 million GYEEDA scam, is not the 419 $14 million mansion for the vice president, is not the 419 GH¢657m Woyome, Waterville and other judgement debt scams.”

He said the 419 scam was the hallmark of the administration of former president Mahama and that Ghanaians would find out more soon as people are held legally accountable.

“With the record that former president Mahama has in the area of governance, it is incredible that he would have the effrontery to talk about “419 scams”.We have spent $2.3 million on a NDPAS and I dare say it is money well spent for the benefit of all Ghanaians.”

“It is not money finding itself into the pockets of a few cronies. We did not spend it on Akonfem, bus branding, over-priced mansions and contracts, ghost roads, etc. We have spent it on something productive.”

As a result, Dr Bawumia continued, “Ghana has an excellent digital property addressing system if former president Mahama would care to take some time and just read and learn about it. It was developed by Ghanaians and we should collectively take pride in their work and not try to pull them down.”