Only an unperceptive person will still insist that the New Patriotic Party is an Akan party.
In fact only such a person will allow himself or herself to be hoodwinked into thinking that Akans do not like people from the north. Even when the late Alhaji Aliu Mahama, a northerner, was chosen by Mr Kufuor as his running mate and he went on to become the Vice President under the NPP regime for eight years, we still had these propagandists referring to the NPP as an Akan party.
They did not stop the vile propaganda when Kufuor appointed Mr Andrew Awuni, another northerner, as his Spokesperson. They said the NPP will never chose a northerner as the party’s National Chairman because if they did so northerners will have more power in the party. From where I stand, I see anyone who comes from any of the three northern regions as a northerner.
Today Mr Paul Afoko, a northerner, is the National Chairman of the party while Dr Bawumia is the running mate for the second time to Nana Addo, with yet another northerner in the person of Madam Afiko Afisa Djaba as the NPP National Women’s Organiser. To dilute the poison of the propagandists, Mustapha Hamid, another northerner, is the Spokesperson for Nana Addo.
I know they are still oiling their propaganda machine and soon they will come out with another ploy aimed at tagging the NPP as an Akan party. And surely, they will follow that path of hatred to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.
In the beginning, his detractors said he was not known in the NPP. They said his father was an NDC supporter and that he too could be one.
They said he was not the firebrand type and as such he could not face the bulldozers in the NDC. Some said he was too “book long” and that he could not march the NDC ‘iron boots boys’ who always want it done on a rough turf. After consulting many fine brains and elders in the party, Nana Addo settled on the man, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, an economic whiz kid and technocrat extraordinaire. When the 2012 campaign started, those who were sceptical about Bawumia’s ability to hit hard realised that they made a big mistake. The man started punching holes in the management of the economy and went on rampage, exposing the lies of the NDC to the admiration of academics and the common man on the streets. Because people did not hear him speak Twi in public before they thought he could not speak Twi; but when he started mounting political platforms in Twi speaking areas, people became very surprised as he dazzled them with his perfect Twi.
Then the ‘babies with sharp teeth” decided to take him on; but nay, the man looked the other way and treated them with ordinary contempt. He delivered lectures and prophesied the worse to come because of the way the economy was being mismanaged by the incompetent Mahama regime. Lo and behold, all his prophesies came to pass. It was during the election petition hearing at the Supreme Court that Ghanaians really got to know the real Dr Bawumia. Even when Tsatsu Tsikata travelled the rough road by trying to coerce him and ungentlemanly called him “Dr Pink Sheet”, the man proved to his older counterpart that this time old age has nothing to do with academic excellence.
The opportunity has come again and I know Dr Bawumia will seize the opportunity to further prove his mettle. Apart from the Zongos where the party will need the services of Dr Bawumia, the man should pitch his camp in the three northern regions. The NDC has brainwashed the people from the Zongos so much that the party will need a person like Dr Bawumia to dilute that poison.
Muslims in Ghana are eagerly looking forward to seeing another Muslim hold the Holy Quran to swear the oath of allegiance as the Vice President of Ghana. The first time the Holy Quran was used to swear an oath at the Independence Square was when the late Alhaji Aliu Mahama used the Holy Book to swear the oath of office as the Vice President of Ghana. The opportunity is knocking at the doors of Ghanaian Muslims and the people of the Zongo should wake up to the clarion call.
Chairman Paul Afoko has a herculean task to perform. If he fails to bring the NPP to power, history will not treat him with kid-gloves. As the first northerner to be elected as the National Chairman, he will also make history as the first northerner to bring the party to power from opposition.
Mr Afoko and his national executive members should as a matter of urgency form a special campaign team that will target tenant farmers and labourers from the north who are located in our villages in the south. Are you, my dear reader, aware that in the run-up to the 2012 elections the NDC propagandists went around the villages telling tenant farm labourers, who are mostly northerners, that because Kufuor wanted to get them out of jobs he had imported many weedicides into the country so that they will not be hired to weed the farms of people for money to cater for their people back home in the north?
In 2016, the NDC will not be able to use those lies because in their time different types of weedicides are in abundance in the market. In their case they have even imported a weedicide which is used to spray maize farms so that there is no need to weed the farms again with hoes and cutlasses.
If you study the voting pattern very well, you will realise that whereas the NPP has been winning in the big towns, the NDC has literally commandeered the villages. Mr Afoko must take care of this dangerous pattern well. If Mr Afoko pins his hopes on the Nassara Club to win votes from the Zongos, it will be a catastrophe because the Nassara Club targets only Muslims. Mr Afoko and his executive members should form another team to target those who live in Zongos but are not Muslims. Other Zongos in this country are not like Nima in Accra, where a greater number of the residents are Muslims. In other Zongos Muslims are relatively very few.
Statistically, women in Ghana are more than men; and so when you are voted as a Women’s Organiser of a political party, your task is more onerous than your male counterpart. The time has come for Madam Afiko Djaba to wipe her lipstick from her lips, learn to wear low heel shoes and jeans because the battle will be tough and there will be no time to show off designer clothes. The advantage this lady has over other Women’s Organisers is that apart from the fact that she comes from the north, she can speak many languages. What past National Women’s Organisers did not know was that while they sat in Accra and directed affairs, Constituency Women’s Organisers did absolutely nothing. They waited until there was a function or a gathering of NPP followers, where there was a need to cook food, before they were seen in action. In fact, they were Constituency Women Disorganisers. They fought among themselves over who should take more food home after serving the delegates and who should pocket more money when the opportunity came.
Madam Afiko Djaba must draw her programme to include visiting all the Constituency Women’s Organisers to see what plans they have put in place to win more souls for the NPP. There is the need for Madam Djaba to compel these Women’s Organisers to write periodic reports to her office and there is also the need for her to follow up to see what they wrote in their reports and whether any action has been taken. When Madam Djaba wanted to be re-elected as the National Women’s Organiser, she criss-crossed the country and even slept in some villages all in an attempt to win votes. Now that she has been given the nod, she should move from Accra and hit the roads.
ONE FOR NANA AKUFO-ADDO
On that fateful day when Justice Atuguba and his other four colleagues at the Supreme Court ruled that Mr John Mahama was rightfully voted into power as the President of Ghana, a night fell on a different world—a world where freedom and justice came under attack. Some of us, like yours sincerely, cursed the day we were born in this country called Ghana. But for your courage which consoled us, we would have had broken feathers and our broken hearts could not be mended, not even by Professor Frimpong Boateng.
You are at the threshold of making history, a history that would be turned into folklore long after you have gone to meet your creator. The sages say once bitten, twice shy; and the Akan also say only a fool will allow his testicles to be trampled upon twice. Take your destiny into your own hands.
If you decide, decide and try to understand the mechanism of decision making, both hidden and overt. Understand that your mission, your historic mission, would be to save this country from the jaws of vampires. Refuse to be distracted and continue to stay focused. At the end of the day, the Flagstaff House which was built by Kufuor will be where you will abide. May He who delivered Israel be with you. I am sitting beside my ninety-six-year-old mother. I do not want to disturb her with any smoke from my cigar. Therefore, permit me to spare her the embarrassment today.
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