Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of 3 Music Awards, Sadiq Abdulai Abu says he is certain that Former President John Dramani Mahama would have made him the minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts if he had won the 2020 presidential election.
Sadiq Abu indicated that he had worked hard and contributed immensely to the manifesto of the NDC enough to catch the eye of the former president for an appointment as the head of the ministry if he had won the election.
He said Mr. Mahama was so passionate and committed to developing the creative arts sector that he would have opted for someone like him who is hard working and has greater understanding of the sector to help him implement his policy ideas aimed at transforming the creative industry.
In his estimation, although there are other individuals in the party who stood the chance of grabbing the job, he stood a better chance of being appointed as the Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts minister if the NDC had won the 2020 elections.
The CEO of 3 Music is, however, hopeful of becoming a minister of the creative arts sector in the future.
“It is possible that I will become tourism minister. If you look at the work we are doing with the NDC, I think it was something that was in the offing if we had won because of how hard myself and uncle Rex and everybody that was in the party at time were working. We worked on a manifesto that was clearly different. It was strongly based on thoughtful leadership and understandings of the industry and what ought to be done by the state to enable it,” he stated in an interview on Accra-based Joy FM.
Sadiq Abu added “there was a clear understanding of it and our presidential candidate, H.E John Mahama was very committed to it. We had done presentations to him and he had shared ideas and there were number of suggestions that came directly from him. The idea to turn NAFTI into an autonomous university with its own campuses that will also receive that massive infrastructure boost and everything came directly from him. He sort of had a clear understanding of the industry and what he wanted to do. So that gave us that encouragement and obviously I knew that any of us in our party could be the minister of tourism. The likes of myself, Dzifa Gomashie, Rex Omar, James Agenim Boateng we all clearly understood the space and it was just a matter of time that any one of us could actually be the minister”.
Sadiq Abdulai Abu was part of the communication team of the NDC charged with the responsibility of communicating the party’s policy ideas concerning the creative arts sector ahead of the December 7 polls.
The party, in its 2020 manifesto titled the People’s Manifesto, promised among others to establish a separate ministry for the creative industry, implement programs to support the growth of film, music and the Industry as a whole in order to drive job creation and economic growth as well as upgrade the National Film and Television Institute into a fully-fledged multimedia university for films, arts, theatre and music.
