The vice-president, Mahamudu Bawumia, says when he was at university he had no interest in politics and could not have known he would rise to his current level of national leadership.
The vice-president, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has said he never dreamt of going into politics after studying economics and obtaining a First-Class honours degree at the University of Buckingham in 1988.
During the question-and-answer session after his virtual lecture on Monday (9 May 2022), on the topic “Ghana’s Role in Shaping Africa’s Economic Transformation”, Bawumia told students of Buckingham University that, “I was the most apolitical. I never thought, ‘I will go into politics.’”
Bawumia, then a deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana, was picked by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the run-up to the 2008 general election as a running mate to the party’s then-presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The duo won the 2016 poll on their third attempt.
Touching on corruption, Bawumia said the government’s digitalisation agenda is among the measures to close in on graft in Ghana’s public sector.
“… The most transparent systems that we are putting in place are these digital platforms. For example, when we introduced the football e-ticket I could sit in my office and watch the dashboard minute by minute to see how many tickets were being sold.
“I can do the same for Ghana’s gold sales. I can sit in my office and know how much has been assayed … The digitalisation that is happening is really shining a light … corrupt people hate transparency,” Dr Bawumia said.
Watch the full lecture below:
