IMANI Africa President, Franklin Cudjoe, has questioned President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s rationale for appointing three deputy ministers to some portfolios.

President Akufo-Addo, on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, released the list of deputy ministers for his second term.

In all, the president named 39 persons who will serve as deputy ministers, once they are approved by Parliament.

Ministries like Trade and Industry, Energy, and Local Government and Regional Reorganisation were assigned three deputy ministers each.

This has generated public discourse, with some questioning the president’s promise to drastically reduce the size of the government in his second term.

Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, contributing to Citi FM/TV‘s weekend current affairs programme, The Big Issue on Saturday, April 24, 2021, questioned the rationale behind those appointments.

According to him, those ministries have technocrats and authorities under them and thus, do not need more than one deputy minister.

He insists such appointments are unnecessary.

“When I saw the list, a few things jumped at me and probably, those are the only issues I have with the list and that’s [the fact that] some of the ministries [will] eventually have three deputies, and I wonder why.

“As I said, they have agency heads, and they also have technocrats and even some of these ministries have authorities under them…I thought they could have been done with just one person, like Trade and Energy [Ministries for instance], and the likes.”

Meanwhile, a former Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Joseph Kpemka, also on the same show, described the list as an excellent one.

“One interesting thing I noticed about these appointments is that His Excellency, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is a genius of a president. If you look at this and juxtapose it against the backdrop of those appointed and their level of expertise and age and all that, you realize that 90 to 95% [of the appointments] fall with the youth bracket. That means he is preparing the future of the party because if you have a situation where all your appointees or the majority of them are at a point of exiting from public life, then your party’s future is in jeopardy. But in these particular appointments he has made, he has been very strategic and [this is an] excellent list for that matter. They are young and intelligent guys and an overwhelming majority of them are achievers already from their previous appointments.”