Following the historic and ignominious defeat of the New Patriotic Party to the National Democratic Congress in the 2024 elections, there has been a deluge of opinions in the public space about why the ruling party failed to break the so-called 8-year jinx in the country’s electoral politics.
Although the public’s reactions to the NPP’s electoral defeat are not surprising, what is surprising is the reactions by supporters and party members and the timing of these reactions.
In other words, our party and government were doing the very things that would cause us to lose the elections, yet the party’s elders looked on unconcerned until Akufo-Addo and his kinsmen crossed the redline of defeat crushing the UP political tradition beyond recognition.
Nana Akomea’s claim is emblematic of this expectation of the NPP’s imminent loss. He admitted that, as early as February 2024, the party leadership, through an internal poll, knew that the party would lose because it trailed the NDC by about 10 percentage points.
Even though Blessing Miracles Aboagye, the spokesperson for the Bawumia campaign, questioned the veracity of Nana Akomea’s claim about the impending loss, most members of the party knew from the inception of the second term of the Akufo-Addo administration that the president was driving the party and the country into a ditch.
While I agree that Akufo-Addo’s rudderless and lackadaisical administration was responsible for the party’s impending fate, the party leadership’s relative silence during this period complicated the rot that ended up in the worst electoral defeat in history by a political party.
But, truth be told, not all of us can share this collective blame for the party’s failure because some of us saw the imminent calamity and wrote about it, however, our opinions did not get the needed traction from the party leadership for fear of retribution by the president and his gang of family pirates.
The first scandal that engulfed the NPP which the leadership ignored was the plagiarized inaugural speech by the president and his team of communicators. This conduct by the Director of Communications at the presidency was not only embarrassing but indicative of the crooked nature of the incoming government that the leadership ignored at the great peril of the party.
At this juncture, I must render a sincere apology to the party and Ghanaians in general for this scandal because following this scandal, Dr. Obeng Busia and I mounted a vigorous defense of this shameful conduct by the barely a day-old government in the Daily Guide newspaper putting the issue to rest (In fact, this was the only time Daily Guide would publish an article about the President and his cohorts because it was not critical of them).
The one misstep of the Akufo-Addo government that the party leadership ignored was the serial appointment of his family members and friends, an act that deliberately marginalized party and non-party members who were competent and experienced in governance in previous administrations.
This conduct of the Akufo-Addo government, which was without a doubt, orchestrated by his nephews and cousins who had ring-fenced him from other decent members and elders of the party, resulted in the appointment of over sixty (60) members of the president’s family members to lucrative and influential positions in the administration.
These unprecedented appointments and those of the president’s lady friends were much to the chagrin of hardworking party members who had toiled to bring the party to power and therefore alienated them physically and psychologically from doing any serious work for the party.
This demoralizing attitude of party members was demonstrated by the party’s loss in the Assin North by-election and the near miss of the Ejisu one following the demise of Hon. John Kumah despite the party’s huge advantage the party had regarding the sympathy vote.
One clear example of this agenda of appointing only friends and relatives in Akufo-Addo’s administration was that there was a broad consensus in the party to have the late Dr. Anthony Osei Akoto appointed as the finance minister in the first place.
However, this decision was jettisoned by the “Kyebi Mafia” in favor of Ken Ofori Attah, the quintessential family pirate who turned out to be the country’s worst finance minister and is now wanted by the Special Prosecutor for questioning.
This preference of family and clan members over other party members explains why competent UP stalwarts like Hon. Boakye Agyarko were sacrificed by the president and his inner circle early in the life of his administration.
This was because such die-in-the-wool UP members like Boakye Agyarko would not stoop so low to the temptations of cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and constant interference in their work by representatives of the “Kyebi Mafia”, hence they became the sacrificial lambs quite early on in the administration!
Truth be told, only an imbecile would buy the president’s argument at the time of Boakye Agyarko’s ouster, that he was misled by the then Energy Minister (Boakye Agyarko), into signing the so-called Ameri deal, ignoring the key role played especially by his cousin and de facto Prime Minister, Gabby Otchere-Darko.
Contrast Akufo-Addo’s criteria for appointments in 2017 with that of President Mahama now and you will appreciate why as a political party is now on a fast growth trajectory. Specifically, President Mahama’s appointments have been consistent so far with a well-known fact that the NDC rewards hard work.
I was one of six people who founded the South African Branch of the NPP and was its vice chairman during the 2016 campaign and I, therefore, know the role played by the party’s overseas branches during this campaign in terms of party financing and intellectual input.
However, today, it’s a truism that the overseas branches of the NPP are in a serious decline because the Akufo-Addo administration reneged on its promise of rewarding these hardworking overseas branches with the requisite appointments that instead went to his kinsmen and friends.
The Mike Ocquaye Committee to probe the reasons why the party lost miserably in the December elections is a delay tactic by those who were supposed to tender their resignations as soon as the party lost for being complicit in the Akufo-Addo circus that came to town to crush the UP Tradition.
There is simply no need to waste money and time to set up a committee led by a member of the complicit group in the party that acquiesced in the destruction of the party and country by Akufo-Addo and his family.
In conclusion, the loss of the party was simply a function of the early missteps by Akufo-Addo and the complicity of the elders of the party who for fear of intimidation looked on while the President did what he liked. The time and money that the party is using to finance the Ocquaye Committee would rather benefit the reform and re-organization of the NPP.
Acheampong Yaw Amoateng, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University, Fiapre, Bono region (He writes in his capacity as a founding member of the NPP).
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