The former Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has said that President Mahama's admission in New York that the Covid-19 pandemic adversely hit the Ghanaian economy indicates that he was aware of the truth during the 2024 election campaign but did not say it.
Whether the deadly global pandemic that hit the world from 2020 to 2022 became a topic in Ghana's 2024 elections, where the two leading political parties took different positions, is a matter of concern.
While the then NPP administration indicated that the pandemic set the economy back with unpredictable markets and reduction of revenue, leading to exponential cost of living, the opposition NDC led by President Mahama dissociated the then government's claim that, asserting that Covid-19 had no negative impact on the economy of Ghana.
But in New York, at a side event of the 80th UN General Assembly, President Mahama acknowledged that Covid-19 indeed has pummeled Ghana's economy.
"The Covid-19 pandemic erased two decades of poverty reduction progress in barely two years," President Mahama stated at the event.
Reacting to the development while on his campaign tour of the Eastern Region, Dr. Bawumia stated that the President knew the truth throughout the 2024 electioneering campaign.
"For since 2022 when covid-19 hit the economy of the nation, commodity prices and rose. And during the 2024 campaign, we said that the cost of living has been significantly impacted by covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war. When we stated this, Presidemt Mahama and the NDC accused us of lying," said Dr. Bawumia.
"They claimed covid-19 had no impact on the economy. They claimed it was a case of economic mismanagement. But I've heard that President Mahama in New York has reported that covid-19 did impact economies. He claimed that all our efforts towards poverty reduction in several many years have been wasted by covid-19."
"The President was aware of the truth but he never spoke it out while campaigning. But by God's mercy now he has spoken out the truth."