The quest for power – Nana then, Nana now

It appears the famous Catholic hymn “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me”, is becoming Nana Akufo-Addo’s solemn song a few days to the elections.

Call it “desperation”, and the 68 year-old Nana Addo, who is pictured (above) on his knees with about 13 pastors praying to God, to help him realize his lifelong presidential ambition, might not disagree with you, as night is fast falling on his political carrier.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate who at a church service last year, declared “at all cost we need to win the election of 2012,” is himself not leaving any stone unturned and has departed from his expensive 2008 Secular Concert Party campaign, led by A-Plus and Daddy Lumba to a religious style campaign.

For this reason, Nana Addo, in recent times has visited many Spiritual Churches, Orthodox churches as well as Charismatic Churches in the country, seeking the eye of God.

The latest picture is similar to Christine Churcher’s 2008 photograph in which she was on her knees before some fishermen in the Central Region begging them not to vote against Nana Addo, the man who wanted to marry her many years ago.

This photograph captured at an unidentified church, comes days after an earlier one in far away Israel where Nana Addo went crying before the famous “Wailing Wall” located in the Old City of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount.

The religion-based campaign, comes days after Research International (RI), a company owned by the National Chairman of the NPP claimed the party would sweep approximately 52 per cent of the total votes in the December 7 presidential polls, while its rival, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) will get 46.9 per cent of the vote.

Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey’s company claimed the NPP was set to sweep Christian votes with 56 per cent against the NDC’s 40 per cent.

The research company, which is located that Osu-Ako Adjei in Accra, does market surveys for soap and cosmetic producer, Unilever Ghana Limited.

The NDC is set to win about 63 per cent of Muslim votes against the NPP’s 39 per cent. The same trend is expected to be repeated among voters in the traditional religion where the NDC would sweep over 60 per cent of the votes.

The NDC’s votes would mostly come from Ghana’s Islamic and traditional religions.

Research International, is one of the numerous companies owned by Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey.

One other prominent company which is into advertising is the Lintas Ghana Limited.

Prior to the 2008 Presidential and Parliament elections, Research International projected that NPP was going to win the election “one touch” but this turned out to be the opposite.

According to the present findings, the other smaller parties would barely make one per cent of the collective votes.

The research was conducted between September and October 2012 across all the 230 constituencies in Ghana.

MSRI is an offshoot of the global research firm, Research International (RI), an affiliate of WPP Research, the world’s largest communications service group. WPP is a global research conglomerate with over 162, 000 staff working in 3,000 offices across 110 countries.

The company is likened to communications firms: such as Fitch, the global rating organization; Kander, an internationally acclaimed research group; and Ogilvy South Africa, a communications group with footprints across Africa.

The RI is said to have used a sufficiently large sample size of 4,600 people across different demographics in the country.

According to the poll, the research survey, which specifically targeted the two biggest parties, NPP and NDC, had a confidence level of 98 per cent with a minimal margin of error of 1.8 per cent-plus or minus in the survey.