The founding President and the Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa have lashed out at former Minister of State, Elizabeth Akua Ohene over her latest article in which she accused Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) of being intolerant to criticism.
Madam Elizabeth Akua Ohene in the said article accused the CSOs of always opposing and criticizing government decisions adding that the CSOs are intolerant to opposing views as they viewed themselves as experts in everything and have solutions to all of Ghana’s problem.
She again accused the CSOs of introducing a number of corrupt acts into the Ghanaian society as well as evading taxes in time past while creating impressions that every politician and government official is corrupt.
The former Staff of Graphic Communications contended that the CSOs cannot be experts in all fields as they appeared to be and cannot love and serve Ghana more than politicians and government officials.
It is also her contention that the CSOs cannot be more knowledgeable than all other organizations and people in the country.
Backing her arguments, Madam Elizabeth Ohene recalled how the CSOs vehemently opposed decisions taken by government in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. She recounted that the CSOs had predicted that Ghana was heading towards health crisis when schools were reopened for final year students alongside the commencement of the voters registration exercise and had also alleged that government was massaging the death toll of Covid-19.
She noted, however, that the CSOs which were vociferous have all gone quite after Ghana’s Covid-19 fight yielded positive results leading to a reduction in the number of active cases and daily recorded cases.
But reacting to her article in different posts on social media, Mr. Franklin Cudjoe and Kofi Bentil of IMANI Africa expressed their displeasures over the content of the article directed at them and other members of CSOs.
Senior Vice-president of Imani Africa, Kofi Bentil rejected the claim that CSOs in the country do not accept criticism suggesting that the said article is an attack against the CSOs over their criticism against the Agyapa Royalties Mineral agreement. He stated that they are unfazed about such attacks insisting that the deal is bad for the country.
On his part, Franklin Cudjoe detailed the credentials of his outfit, Imani Africa in socio-political issues in a series of post on Facebook. He also recounted how Madam Elizabeth Ohene was given numerous platforms by Imani Africa to speak on various societal issues when the NPP was in opposition but turned around to label them as ‘all-knowing’.
“Here was Ms. Elizabeth Ohene speaking on corruption when IMANI gave her the platform when she and her party were in opposition. She was given another platform to speak on education reforms when she and her party were in opposition. She attended other forums IMANI organised on electoral reforms and others. We weren’t all knowing on education, corruption, electoral reforms etc.” Mr. Cudjoe stated in one of his posts on Facebook.
