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In another instance, Akufo-Addo said: “I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building your communities and our nation.”
In his 2001 inaugural speech, Bush said: “I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.”
The presidency’s communication director acknowledged the plagiarism and offered an apology.
“I unreservedly apologize for the non-acknowledgment of this quote to the original author. It was a complete oversight, and never deliberate,” Eugene Arhin said, according to DPA news agency.
Akufo-Addo, a 76-year-old former human rights lawyer,
In September, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari also issued an apology for plagiarizing quotes from US President Barack Obama in a speech promising change in the West African country.
Buhari’s office said at the time a paragraph in the speech urging Nigerians not to fall back “on the same partisanship, pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our country so long” was copied from Obama’s victory speech after his election in November 2008.
“It was observed that the similarities between a paragraph in President Obama’s 2008 victory speech and what President Buhari read in paragraph nine of the 16-paragraph address … are too close to be passed as coincidence,” Buhari’s office said in a statement
