No politician should drive $120K V8 in Ghana – Adei

Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Professor Stephen Adei has said Ghanaian politicians have no business driving $120,000 V8s.

The former rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) said until politicians fix the bad roads in the country, they must avoid using $120,000 V8s.

Ghana’s MPs, ministers, deputy ministers, Commission Chairpersons, Chief Directors, CEOs, MDs, Directors (in some cases, Deputy Directors) of state-owned institutions, as well as presidential staffers, mayors/DCEs/MCEs and other government officials are assigned V8s paid for and fuelled by the state.

But Prof Adei believes no Ghanaian politician deserves that privilege.

Speaking on ClassFM, Prof. Adei said: “In this country of ours, our politicians should not be riding in V8s, period. You go and ride $120,000 car on a dirt road and when there’s traffic you say that everybody should stand by for you to go. They’ve missed the leadership.”

Touching on the Parliamentary Services Board’s botched move to construct a new $200 million 450-seat chamber for Ghana’s lawmaker’s, Prof Adei said the leadership got it wrong.

He said: “In leadership, you should be a model in how you behave; they got it wrong and their fingers have been burnt badly. For me, I never talked about it because I was expecting this backlash and if journalists and the bad boys are going to do this backlash, we’ll just watch it and see because the politicians must learn through the hard way and I think they’ve withdrawn it and must be withdrawn for decades because when they bring it back, they will see what the people will do to them.”