What Ghanaians are expecting to hear from President Nana Akufo-Addo

The President is expected to touch on how he is going to bring into fruition the various promises he made during the electioneering period.

Ahead of his presentation, some analysts in the various sectors of the economy have been speaking with Pulse.com.gh on what their expectations are.

Governance

"For me, I am looking at the strengthening of state institutions to allow them to be able to function without any interferences from the government. For example, how do we ensure that CHRAJ is resourced to be able to perform its duties. What about the auditor’s general as well as PIAC. We can also look at the NCCE, how will they be able to work effectively within their mandate. For me I expect government to allocate more resources to these institutions and appoint competent people to lead these institutions. And of course, we have also heard about the independent prosecutor. We want to know the framework, how independent will it be from the government."

Education

"The president has indicated his preparedness and intention to implement the free Senior High School (SHS) policy. We expect the president to highlight how that project will be implemented. And also address quite an important issue such as quality. We are expecting the president to highlight issues on equity for pupils who have access to secondary school and have dropped out...Ghana secondary education improvement project is currently underway and that is expected to end in 2019. And we expect the president will highlight how his free shs will integrate into exisiting policies. And also teacher quality...There are existing programmes like transforming teacher education and learning project. So we expect the president to highlight how he intends to improve teacher quality. Technical and vocational education must also be an important issue on the table in relation to developing our education system. And we expect the president to provide us a clear direction on how the people who are unable to access the senior high school will have the opportunity to enter the technical and vocational education. We expect the president to look at the professional development of teachers in terms of the National Teaching council...as we speak now that Council is not operating efficiently. We expect the president to highlight how that teaching council can be allowed to operate efficiently with the relevant funding."

Business

"We expect that the state of the nation address will make clearer the vision for the first 2017 and particularly for the business environment. And also essentially the strategy in terms of stabilising the currency which is a major worry now. It appears that it is difficult to begin to budget very well in the country now because you cannot predict the behaviour of the currency in a next week or so. So we are expecting that a vision will be laid down clearly and an outline of what measures they will take to stabilise basically the economy. I think that if the economy is clearly very stabilised...and as to how to be able to engender growth in the private sector so as to create the needed jobs which is very very imperative in this country. I've always said that this country is sitting on a time bomb in the sense that the teeming youth will one day rise against this country if we do not do something."

Health

"We are hoping that now that a new government is here and they are going to read the State of the Nation address we are hoping that we wouldn’t be neglected as we used to be especially with our LI that we are always asking that they should pass. We hope that it will be factored in there, in fact they should tell us the plan they have for mental health. Because in their manifesto we didn’t see anything at all...so we hope that they put something in there concerning us, especially with funding. Funding is a major issue for us. And at least the logistics and the medications that we need...consequently, we should have them. It shouldn’t be always we running around and they have to tell us about procurement issues here and there."

Meanwhile, the opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC) has asked President Akufo-Addo to come clean on his “grandiose campaign promises” made to Ghanaians, when he delivers his maiden State of the Nation Address on Tuesday, February 21, 2017.

The Deputy General Secretary of the opposition NDC, Koku Anyidoho has told Accra-based Kasapa FM that “There seem to be too much confusion in government now. The centre cannot hold, as there is no clear direction on governance. With all the confusion and distortion that is taking place in governance, my prayer is that tomorrow the President will provide us with a clear roadmap that will kill all the ugly noises that is coming from his appointees. God forbid that I go on my knees and pray that the NPP fails. We wish him well and pray that he does well for the country.”