Cheddar: My mission is to inspire the youth to greatness

Ghanaian entrepreneur and founder of the New Force Movement, Nana Kwame Bediako, popularly known as Cheddar or Freedom Jacob Caesar, has said that his mandate as the “Prince of Africa” is to inspire the youth to achieve great things.

In an interview on Citi TV’s “The Point of View” programme, he opened up that “people have been trying to express themselves in terms of their fashion sense and freedom of doing many things, but they are restricted; some are living with their mothers at the age of 28 and want to express themselves, but they are restricted, so I have built that character to inspire so people can be inspired.”

This character, he believes, stems from not just how he has been able to manage his businesses but also his leadership potential and skills in managing people and other work.

Delivering on his leadership track record, he posited that the traits of his leadership know-how stem from how, through his “New Africa Foundation,” he has been able to merge the Christian and Moslem communities into having a better relationship in terms of associating them to work together and distributing packages to people. These schedules and works he believes make him responsible and define his leadership strength.

He also talked about his job creation abilities, revealing that “I have about 300 employees that I pay,” which according to him defines his leadership abilities in handling people working for him.

On the driving force behind his aspiration for the presidency, Cheddar stated that, as a young person, he wants to rally the youth of the country to take their rightful place in the decision-making process.

“I think The New Force is standing for the youth in this country, and we believe that the youth have the right to be a part in the decision on how and who is going to lead us and how they are supposed to lead us. I am the unifier between youth and government.”

He added that his policy is to create a middle-income nation where each region, based on the resources and minerals they possess, will be utilised to create jobs to limit the number of people who come to Accra for better living conditions.

The businessman also spoke about the cancellation of a recently planned public lecture named “The Convention”. He claimed that he was disappointed with the turnout of the event because he had fasted every first day of every month, praying for its success, so when it got cancelled, he asked, “God, why did this happen? Because I had prayed about it, and God said I thought you said you wanted a successful event.”

“It turned out that the cancellation made The New Force brand and the cancelled event much more popular than earlier anticipated,” he added.

Cheddar further argued that Ghana needs to become responsible for its own decisions based on who we choose to lead us.

“There is no point in choosing a leader for 8 years, and in the end, you do not get anything out of them based on their governance or their manifesto,” he observed.