A finance and management expert aligned with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has accused the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of routinely piloting what he describes as flawed policies in the Ashanti Region before withdrawing them after they fail.
Dr. Ishaq Kyei-Brobbey, a senior lecturer at Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) and NPP member, made the claims during a discussion on Angel FM in Kumasi, drawing on several historical policy examples to support his argument.
“All the NDC policies that are bad start right here in the Ashanti Region,” he said, pointing specifically to the capitation payment system under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as an example. Records confirm that the NHIS capitation model, a provider payment method introduced to control healthcare costs, was indeed piloted in the Ashanti Region from 2012 and was subsequently suspended in August 2017 after facing significant implementation challenges, including provider resistance and concerns about care quality.
Dr. Kyei-Brobbey also challenged what he described as NDC’s tendency to claim authorship of policies introduced by other administrations. He argued that the mutual health insurance concept and the National Health Insurance Scheme are distinct, crediting former President John Agyekum Kufuor’s administration with establishing the NHIS. “The NHIS and free maternal healthcare system were groundbreaking projects under President J.A. Kufuor,” he said. He added that former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo subsequently expanded the scheme to cover four mental health conditions.
On education, he rejected comparisons between historical scholarship programmes and the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy. “The Northern scholarship introduced by Kwame Nkrumah cannot be classified as Free SHS; Free SHS is solely an initiative of the NPP,” he said, adding that earlier funding mechanisms such as GETFund and Cocoa Board scholarships were support systems rather than a universal fee-abolition policy.
Dr. Kyei-Brobbey also raised concerns about the distribution of government infrastructure projects, singling out coding centres as an area where the Ashanti Region he says is underserved. “The disparity in the sharing of projects like the current coding centres, especially in the Ashanti Region, is alarming,” he said, suggesting the region is not receiving adequate attention despite delivering the NDC its second-highest regional vote tally in the 2024 general elections.
He concluded with sharp criticism of changes to the design of the Sofoline Interchange in Kumasi, describing the original concept as highly innovative and the revised structure as a significant downgrade.
His remarks represent the perspective of an NPP member and political commentator. The NDC had not responded to the specific claims at the time of this report.
