NPP rumpus: Agyepong must go – Lecturer

A member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Poku Adusei has said the party must get rid of its General Secretary Kwabena Agyepong, as part of “hard decisions” that need to be taken towards ending the raging rumpus in the Danquah-Busia-Domba family.

The law lecturer at the University of Ghana said the current power struggle and confusion in the biggest opposition party will fester if certain “legs”, Mr Agyepong being one of them, aren’t severed from the NPP.

Mr Adusei said failure to take those hard surgical decisions in the party would bode ill for its fortunes in next year’s elections.

The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the NPP, a few weeks ago, unanimously upheld a recommendation by the Disciplinary Committee to indefinitely suspend Mr Afoko for working against the interest of the Flagbearer and the political body.

Mr Afoko’s supporters have been angered by the decision and have held demonstrations and submitted petitions to demand his immediate reinstatement. The division over the first-ever elected northern chairman’s suspension led to skirmishes between pro-Afoko and pro-party supporters in the Ashanti Region’s Asawase constituency, leading to the multiple stabbing and killing of party 37-year-old party member Saddiq.

Speaking on to Bernard Avle on the development on Citi FM’s ‘The Big Issue’ Saturday, Mr. Adusei said the NPP was better off without the people who still hold Mr Afoko as Chairman despite the NEC decision, a reference to Mr Kwabena Agyepong, who expressly told the media a couple of weeks ago that Mr Afoko remains chairman of the party.

Pressed further to state some of the hard steps he thinks must be implemented to salvage the situation, Mr. Adusei said: “One hard decision will be to deal with the leg in the party that believes that the suspended chairman is still the chairman of the party”.

Asked if one of those legs includes Mr Agyepong, Mr. Adusei responded in the affirmative, adding that: “I believe so, because the day that the executive overwhelmingly met in the office; in spite of the notification that they should not come for that meeting, the Secretariat wasn’t okay. So, I think they must let the organs of the party work,” he said.