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President John Mahama will today, Thursday, 5 January 2017, deliver his final State of the Nation Address as he prepares to leave office and make way for President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo.
Mr Akufo-Addo will be sworn into office by the Chief Justice in parliament on Saturday, 7 January.
Mr Mahama’s final address was billed for 22 December 2016, but was rescheduled.
The outgoing president’s address will mark the end of the 6th parliament of the fourth Republic. The 6th parliament will stand dissolved on the midnight of 6 January, 2017.
Mr Mahama is expected to use his final national speech as president to remind Ghanaians of his government’s achievements while urging unity in the country and rallying support for his successor.
Meanwhile, former president of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Mr Sam Okudzeto, has said President Mahama must use his last State of the Nation address to render an unqualified apology to former President Jerry John Rawlings for “alienating” him during his four-year term in office.
The veteran lawyer also said Mr Mahama must offer a similar apology to the founder of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on behalf of his young appointees who were “rude” to Mr Rawlings.
“…Normally if you are leaving office, you may try to apologise to people you may have hurt or harmed … that’s one thing he should do. It is natural. You can never be in office without hurting people,” Mr Okudzeto said.
As far as an apology to Mr Rawlings is concerned, Mr Okudzeto told Joy FM: “That is very important also because I think he has so much alienated himself from him, and I think he needs to apologise for that because he was the founder of the party, no matter what happened nobody can deny that. And he needed to be accorded that respect. But I think a lot of the young people around Mahama have been rude to [former] president Rawlings and I think that is something that he on behalf of those people should apologise to Rawlings for, that should be part of his address.”
