Afenyo-Markin Tells UCC Students Mahama’s Flagship Plans Remain Unfulfilled

Parliamentary Minority Leader Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin used a university campus forum to deliver his most pointed public assessment yet of the Mahama administration’s first year, telling more than 1,000 students that the government had traded governance for slogans and left its three most prominent policy commitments largely undelivered.

The remarks were made on Saturday, February 21, 2026, at the School of Graduate Studies Conference Hall at the University of Cape Coast, during the inauguration of the Young Commons Forum (YCF) UCC Chapter, a youth governance and leadership initiative Afenyo-Markin launched in September 2025 and has since expanded to several universities including the University of Professional Studies, Accra and the University of Education, Winneba.

The Effutu Member of Parliament said that one year into its tenure, the government had not delivered on the 24-hour economy, the proposed Women’s Development Bank, or its pledge to raise the producer price of cocoa to GH¢6,000 per bag. “For the past year, we have seen a government that believes in rhetoric, talks more than it works,” he told the audience.

His criticism of the 24-hour economy sharpened around the government’s decision to legislate a new authority to oversee the initiative. He questioned the logic of creating another government institution to drive what he argued should be a private sector-led programme, describing the move as adding bureaucracy where enterprise was needed.

He also raised the cost of living as a live concern, pointing to the introduction of a GH¢1 levy on data as evidence that the government’s economic interventions had added costs rather than eased pressure on ordinary Ghanaians.

In a separate address at the same event, Afenyo-Markin described the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy introduced under former President Nana Akufo-Addo as the most consequential social policy of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, saying it transformed access to secondary education at a scale no previous government had achieved.

He also traced the historical foundations of the Danquah-Dombo-Busia political tradition and urged the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to rebuild trust with Ghanaians not by discarding its policy record but by returning to the core principles of service, discipline, and performance that defined the tradition’s founders.

The Young Commons Forum UCC Chapter’s newly elected seven-member executive was inaugurated at the close of the summit.