The supervisor of Nana Akufo-Addo’s inauguration speech must be sacked for embarrassing the President and dragging the name of the country into disrepute, an academician has said.
Professor Cletus Dordornu in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show said the allegations of plagiarism against Akufo-Addo is saddening.
“The issue about plagiarism has always been there. It was saddening. I would want to blame the President, but whoever supervised the writing of the speech should have made reference to theses people.”
President Akufo-Addo has come under pressure to fire some members of his communication team for supervising the writing of his inaugural speech that had portions of it lifted from a speech delivered by former President of the US, George Bush, but failed to credit them.
After the heavy criticisms over the weekend, the international media also fed on the news, a situation analysts say has brought shame to the President and the country.
While the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Eugene Arhin in a Facebook post apologized for the incident, Economist, Professor Cletus Dordornu says the supervisors of the speech must be fired.
“I know many cases where because of plagiarism, PhD thesis were rejected. Because of plagiarism, a lot of shame has been brought to people. It would have been wonderful if those lines were acknowledged it would have enriched the presentation. Generally, I remember from 1790 when the issues were taken very seriously, the Presidents remove their speech writers because it is like casting a slur on the President.”
Although the inauguration ceremony was characterised by many high points including the spirit of friendliness demonstrated among all former President and President Akufo-Addo reiteration of his resolve to lead Ghana into a period of economic transformation and progress, the allegation of plagiarism appeared to have taken the shine out of the event, dominating discussions in various media spaces locally and abroad.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
