“Ghana cannot accelerate its growth and development unless NPP and NDC politicians tackle issues that affect the well-being of the people without their political lenses,” he stressed.

Dr Manteaw decried when there were issues affecting the socioeconomic well-being of Ghanaians, rather than looking at it from perspective of how they were affected, it is looked at from the perspective of how the issues affected political fortunes of the parties they belonged which he described as sad and unfortunate.

His comments come on the back of citizens facing the brunt of underdevelopment and poverty with revenue from natural resources extracted in the country being mismanaged when he addressed the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GhEITI) forum in Sunyani in partnership with the German International Cooperation (GIZ).

Dr Manteaw bemoaned the situation where politicians were using divide and rule to control the citizenry and reiterated the need to recognise Ghanaians before followers of their party and look at issues as Ghanaians.

“The day both NPP and NDC followers begin to identify problems and challenges facing the country and point it out to their governments, that will be when we will begin to see progress, growth and development but until we do this, if we continue seeing issues from political lenses, then the country will not make headway in efforts and critical transition from probity, transparency to accountability is yet to be achieved.

“We want to see citizens use the EITI and the Public Interest Accountability Committee reports to demand probity, transparency and accountability from duty bearers which must involve going to court to compel people who flout the laws to do the needful,” Dr Manteaw hinted.

Alhaji Bashiru Razak, the National Coordinator for GhEITI, observed that discussions would put the government on check to be financially responsible, transparent and accountable on the use of extractive sector revenues and urged stakeholders to familiarise themselves with issues contained in the reports.