Mr Richard Suma, an engineer and an entrepreneur, has launched his bid as an Independent Presidential Candidate for the 2024 general elections.
Speaking at a press conference to officially declared his intention to contest the 2024 general elections as an Independent Presidential Candidate in Accra, Mr Suma, who is 47 years of age, reiterated that it was “Time to Renew, Revive and Redirect the Nation.”
He said his decision to contest the 2024 election was a divine calling, a mission and an assignment.
He noted that he was taking inspiration from Ghana’s Founding President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, stating that he believes that the black man had the capacity to solve his own problems.
“When Kwame Nkrumah mentioned that the black man is capable of solving his own problems, many thought he was hallucinating or he was delusional, he attempted to prove to the entire African continent and beyond that the black man is equally potent in terms of our mental capacity to be able to solve our own problems; that has been my ideological orientation over the years,” Mr Suma stated.
He appealed to Ghanaians to vote massively for him on December 7, as their next leader in the next leader, just like how Beninese in 2006 voted Mr Thomas Boni Yayi, an Independent Presidential Candidate into office, who turned the destiny of the West African nation around.
He declared that both the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) had disappointed Ghanaians.
Mr Suma said when given the mandate by Ghanaians on December 7, he would pursue an aggressive policy to revamp the nation’s agriculture sector in order to accelerate national development.
Touching on unemployment among the teeming youth of the country, Mr Suma said his administration would prioritize education and skills development.
“We need to invest in the quality of education and the quality of vocational education and training, we need to train people to become employable, we need to talk about job training and placement,” adding that there was the need to train more people to become entrepreneurs.
“Presently we have a Ghana where cost of living has escalated to the extent that today you buy something for one cedi, tomorrow when you are going to the market, you are not even sure how much it is going to cost again. Because if you get to the market again, one Cedi will metamorphose to two Cedis, two Cedis to three Cedis, on and on,…”.
He said the country was so used to borrowing from the capital market to distribute on capital expenditure, spend some on recurrent expenditure, use some to pay maturing debts, and then when the money is depleted, they go back to the same capital market again to borrow.
“We have even been used to this path to the extent that we have been blocked from the external market, because we are no longer credit worthy,” he said.
Mr Suma assured Ghanaians that his Government would put the nation back on the path of economic recovery and stability.
