Claim: A Facebook user Sur Gyan Nsoatre claimed that the Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Mahama described Ghanaians as naturally dirty in his defence to scrap the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources.
Verdict: Misleading. The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Mahama never described Ghanaians as “naturally dirty”. DUBAWA found that he indicated the country is dirtier than when there was no Ministry of Sanitation, hence his decision to scrap the ministry and make it operate under the Local Government ministry.
Full Text
A Facebook user, Sur Gyan Nsoatre claimed that Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Mahama described Ghanaians as “naturally dirty”. His claim is captured in a news card with the caption “Ogyam is actually going hard on Ghanaians eeish”
The news card read “Ghanaians are naturally dirty. The Sanitation ministry is needless and there is basically nothing I can do to improve it. Best thing is to collapse that ministry.”
Mr Mahama was said to have said this while disclosing his intention to collapse the Sanitation Ministry.
We decided to verify this claim because as the general elections approach, there is a high likelihood of individuals sharing news stories purportedly made by politicians which could be false or misleading.
Verification
In our verification, to find out if Mr Mahama made that comment or not, DUBAWA found out that Mr Mahama made those comments during a Special Public Lecture at the Wisconsin International University College in Accra on Wednesday, April 3, 2024.
The news article was carried across various news platforms including gbconline.com, 3news.com among others. In the lecture, he indicated plans to dissolve the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources due to its perceived ineffectiveness if he becomes president in 2025.
DUBAWA researched to find out whether his lecture was streamed online.m and found it was streamed on the Facebook page of the Wisconsin International University College. In the video which has already garnered over 3,000 views, we found out that Mr Mahama made the commentary during the question and answer segment from 1 hour 55 minutes to 1 hour 58 minutes.
For the avoidance of doubt, this is exactly what Mr Mahama said: “We will close down the Ministry of Sanitation, one, to reduce expenditure and two, I don’t see any use. The country is dirtier than when there was no Ministry of Sanitation.”
“Indeed, this country was cleaner when sanitation was under Local Government than as a standalone Ministry, and we will close that Ministry, and we will take the Sanitation schedule back to Local Government because we want to reduce government expenditure.”
“It is not only the Sanitation Ministry, in Transport, Aviation and Railways, we are going to close them down and send them back to the Transport Ministry. We are going to combine Communications and Information again. So we want to reduce the number of ministries,”
Although Mr Mahama said he was going to scrap the Sanitation Ministry because of its ineffectiveness, he never described Ghanaians as naturally dirty. He only said, “The country is dirtier than when there was no Ministry of Sanitation.”
DUBAWA also reached out to a Citi FM/ Citi TV journalist Chris Kevin who was at the lecture to report finding out if Mr Mahama made those comments. In an interaction with DUBAWA, he described the claim as false.
Conclusion
The claim that the Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, described Ghanaians as naturally dirty in his defence to scrap the Sanitation and Water Resources is misleading.
