TNR Files
The New Patriotic Party’s internal contradictions over the Accra-Kumasi expressway have burst into the open, with the party’s own legislators and communicators lining up to denounce a flagship infrastructure project that the administration insists is a legacy achievement.
The 198.7-kilometre, six-lane highway – one of the largest public works ever attempted by a Ghanaian government – has become an unlikely battleground for a party struggling to define its position on the Mahama administration’s signature spending programme.
Party chairman’s claim backfires
The controversy took an unexpected turn when NPP National Chairman Joseph Danquah Smith Buttey asserted during a Neat FM interview that the contract had actually been awarded under the previous Akufo-Addo administration, specifically by former Roads Minister Francis Asenso-Boakye. When pressed for the contractor’s name or documentary evidence, Buttey could not provide details, instead referring the host to Asenso-Boakye himself.
Parliamentary records, however, show the project was approved by Parliament in 2025 after the NPP left office. The discrepancy has left the party exposed to accusations of either ignorance or deliberate misinformation.
Akim Swedru MP Kennedy Nyarko Osei, a former Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, has led the charge against the project, arguing that the estimated US$1.7 billion cost could simultaneously complete the existing Accra-Kumasi highway and fund a 304-kilometre rail line between the two cities.
“Any serious country would have completed the existing highway and used the remaining amount to construct the rail line,” Osei said, urging politicians to “put partisan politics aside and think nationalistically.”
The argument has gained traction among NPP communicators, with former presidential hopeful Kwadwo Nsafoah Poku telling JoyNews that the expressway – which would take six to eight years to build is not the solution to the deadly accidents on the current stretch. “Fix the existing road,” he insisted.
Forson accuses Asenso-Boakye of sabotage
Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has hit back, alleging during November’s budget debate that Asenso-Boakye personally wrote to President Mahama urging cancellation of the project – an accusation he described as “untenable” for an MP from a constituency the road would serve.
“The road from Accra to Kumasi is more than a road it is opening up a country,” Forson told Parliament.
The government has signalled that the project could serve as a test case for financing large-scale infrastructure entirely from domestic resources. Forson has indicated that US$1.7 billion is already deposited in a dedicated account, with all funding expected to be secured by end-2026 without external borrowing.
The Ghana Armed Forces has reportedly cleared 170 kilometres of the 176-kilometre corridor earmarked for the expressway, with six kilometres outstanding.
For the NPP, however, the project has become a proxy for deeper unease about the party’s post-election identity – caught between defending its own record and opposing a project that its own chairman claims it initiated.