President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has pleaded with Ghanaians to be patient with his administration because “just as our fight for freedom and independence was not achieved in a day, so, too, national prosperity will not come overnight.”

Speaking at this year’s ‘President’s Independence Day Awards’ held on Tuesday, 2 March 2022, at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC), the President said: “As we prepare to celebrate 65 years of independence from colonial power with the theme, ‘Working together, bouncing back to get better,’ let us eschew all acts of divisiveness and self-centeredness which will only retire our forward march”.

“We must have the pride to acknowledge that we’ve made positive strides and we must also have the humility to appreciate that we still have some way to go”, the President said.

“We must have the patience to accept that just as our fight for freedom and independence was not achieved in a day, so too national prosperity will not come overnight.”

According to the President, his government is “establishing a solid foundation for the economic take-off of our country in peace and in unity” while expressing optimism that “we will build a new Ghanaian civilisation which will attract the admiration of Africa and the world.”

Ahead of the 2016 general elections, Nana Akufo-Addo, who is in the second year of his second four-year term, promised to fix the country in less than two years should he win the polls.

“I am promising you that within 18 months of a new government of the NPP, under my leadership, the face of our country, Ghana, is going to change. We are going to get out of stagnation and backwardness and move our country onto the path of progress and prosperity. We can do it. We, the Ghanaian people, have the capacity to change the circumstances of our lives”, he promised at the time.

“This will be a Ghana with opportunities for all, and where everybody is taken care of. We will have a society that is caring and compassionate and expresses solidarity. Nobody is going to be left behind. We are all going to march together, hands linked together, to that great future that beckons us, here in Ghana”, he added.

The then-flag bearer of the NPP made these comments in November 2016 when he addressed a large crowd in Tamale at a regional rally aimed at galvanising support for the then-opposition party ahead of the December 2016 polls.