Akufo-Addo taking the Oath of Office as President of the Republic of Ghana
President Akufo-Addo’s ‘four more to do more’ campaign declared in his bid for re-election suffered a setback following a newspaper report that the president allegedly plagiarized President Donald Trump’s campaign.
The Hawk NewsPaper.Com has discovered that a part of the speech delivered at the 2019 National Delegates’ Conference at the Trade was substantially lifted from Trump when he announced his re-election bid as far back as June 2019.
Launching his campaign in Florida on Tuesday night (US time), Mr Trump exhorted the cheering crowd to keep advancing his political movement to put America’s “own citizens first”.
Speaking at the rally, Mr Pence said, “He said he’d make America great again and that’s exactly what we’ve done,”
“We’re here for one reason and reason only: America needs four more years of President Donald Trump,” he said, prompting a “Four more years!” chant from the crowd. “It’s on,” Mr Pence added. “Time for round two.”
Appealing to Ghanaians to renew his mandate in the 2020 election, Akufo-Addo told the people of Weija Gbawe in the Greater Accra Region his administration has built a solid foundation which must be maintained and expanded after the 2020 election.
“…Four more (years) for Nana so that we can continue the foundation that we are laying for Ghana. It is important that all the strong work that is going into reconstructing our economy and laying the foundation for agriculture and for industry and for our education and health system is maintained.”
This is the second time the President Akufo-Addo is facing a setback.
The first was when Ghanaians gathered at Independence Square in the capital, Accra, to witness the inauguration of Nana Akufo-Addo as the country’s fifth elected president.
But the moment of pride was tarnished, though it may not have been immediately obvious to those in attendance. Akufo-Addo had lifted lines in his 30-minute speech word for word from the inaugural addresses of two U.S. presidents.
The first came from George W. Bush’s speech in 2001. “I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building your communities and our nation,” he said — or, well, they both said.
And then came a line straight from Bill Clinton’s 1993 speech, substituting Ghanaians for Americans: “Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Ghanaians have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people. And we must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us.”
A helpful journalist on Twitter put the clips side by side.
The communications director for the office of the president, Eugene Arhin, took to Facebook to apologize for the “oversight.”
“My attention has been drawn to references being made to a statement in the speech delivered by the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at his swearing in on Saturday, January 7, 2017, which was not duly acknowledged,” he wrote. “I unreservedly apologize for the non-acknowledgement of this quote to the original author. It was a complete oversight, and never deliberate. It is insightful to note that in the same speech were quotes from J.B Danquah, Dr. K.A. Busia, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and the Bible which were all duly attributed and acknowledged.”
Ghanaian social media lighted up with derision at the “oversight,” though others suggested that given the way things were going in other African countries, the plagiarism matter seemed tame.
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