Mass Defections Hit NDC

As if under a certain spell, there seems to be no end in sight for the double mark time march of the National Democratic Congress, NDC, towards disintegration. The party continues to exhibit various symptoms of decay in spite of the hard yet impotent defence by Prof. Atta Mills that there is no cause for alarm. Some pundits have even predicted that the party would lose fifty more seats come election 2004.

From the East Ayawaso constituency comes news about what can pass for a mass defection, an unsavory development which joins the catalogue of setbacks to have afflicted the party these past weeks. And this happening in Nima and Maamobi, areas which have served the cause of the party's tin-god in many forms, this indeed is a lugubrious news. The latest service to be rendered by the Rawlings' boys in Nima and Maamobi was the arranged besieging of the BNI offices when the man was summoned there for questioning about a treasonable utterance he had made earlier.

Coming also in the aftermath of the bold move by Dr. Obed Asamoah in calling the bluff of the party's founder it seems the action has opened the floodgates for the disheartened to advise themselves. After all Rawlings during his latest 'amorphous' press conference asked those who wanted to leave the party to do so before he kicked them out.

The most significant of the defections was that by an area capo called Awwal Larry, a man who had been with the party since the PNDC days and 'decorated' for a number of dirty assignments for the party.

He designed the NDC painting on the wall bordering the Nima 441 section of the Kanda highway. He is also responsible for the composition of various campaign songs for the party during the 1992 and 1996 electioneering campaigns.

In a press conference to announce the defection with a section of his sympathizers he first of all apologized to TV3 for allowing himself to be used to molest a crew of the station on 10th December 2000. Recalling that day he said he regrets it profoundly and asked for forgiveness.

But today Larry as he is popularly known in Nima and 441 has called it quits with the party he says has deceived him and many others in Nima and other Zongo communities for many years.

He was on one of the FM stations last week condemning the party he once fought for but as soon as he finished the interview some NDC thugs rushed to his house where they gnashed their teeth and expressed their resentment with his move. He says that his life is under threat but since he is also an area boy he does not fear anybody. One top NDC on hearing news about the defection came over to their Nima 441 to ascertain the veracity of the development he said.

He also had an anonymous call from someone who spoke in Hausa thus: " You say you have defected eh? We shall see" he said. His response to this he added was that "you cannot do anything to me."

Talking to the ADM Larry said that there is no proper democracy in the NDC in which he has been since 1982.

Mr. Jerry John Rawlings is a man who likes to be listened to but he rarely listens to others. He recalled how on one occasion Rawlings insulted Dr. Chambas describing him as an over-ambitious and selfish man who also wants to be president of Ghana. That was the time when he said they in the Zongo thought he was going to pick Chambas as a running mate but alas this was not to be.

Larry was a member of the Savannah caucus formed to lobby for the choice of a Northern running mate in the NDC.

He was also an 'action trooper' for Dr. Kwesi Botchwey and the incumbent MP for the East Ayawaso constituency. Kwesi Botchwey he said was brought in to reorganize the NDC but this opportunity has eluded the NDC which all indications he said will lose Election 2004.

According to Larry it was good that the Mills faction was allowed to take the slot of flagbearership. Had this failed there would have been mayhem by his supporters.

He recalled how people suspected to be on the side of Kwesi Botchwey were brutalized during the congress. He even displayed a whip made from the hide of a cow and called ' dori or koboko in Hausa which was seized from one of the thugs hired on the day of the congress.

The whip was seized by a man who could not stand the scene as people and even women perceived not to be on the side of Mills were brutalized. Mills won the congress because of intimidation and brute force he disclosed.

"I have joined the NPP because of the visible development the party is bringing into the country. Besides I have seen the changes in those who have embraced the party. These persons have not been showered with money as the NDC was doing but they have rather been given work to do so they can earn a living" he said.

NDC supporters who did dirty work for party look wretched when one sees them he added.

In the Zongo communities there is a wrong notion he said, that the NPP is an Akan party. He countered this by asserting that Kumasi has more Zongos than any other urban center in the country. He added that the Volta region is the most inhospitable to Zongo dwellers and this is not difficult to discern he said.

Larry, a close pal of the constituency's MP is very sure that there would be a by-election in the constituency because the parliamentarian who is also a Botchwey man is not comfortable about the way things are going in the party.

Asked whether Mustapha is in the know about his defection plan he answered in the affirmative.

Awal and his other defectors were received by some NPP party executives at the Nima Social Centre.

In another development on Saturday in Maamobi, Malam Awwal, the chairman of the WADATANPP received fifty former NDC activists who also said they have now seen the light.

Present at the informal ceremony were Hajia Annatu Awwal, Greater Accra Regional Women Coordinator, Mr. Albert Afaglo, Regional Organizer and Mr. Yusif Ahmed, Regional Youth Organizer who had turned up to witness the activities of the club in Maamobi.

Hajia Annatu expressed her delight about the activities of the club about which she said she had already heard. She called for discipline among members.

Mr. Afaglo explained to the WADATA Club members about the importance of effecting the necessary procedures for the picking of a parliamentary candidate for the constituency.

One J.E. Acquah alias Black Cat who was a CDR activist and a former AAK constituency youth organizer for the NDC in the Central Region also denounced his membership of the NDC and formally joined the NPP at the WADATA NPP base at Maamobi.

Reliable information have reached the ADM about more defections in the East Ayawaso constituency as the part continues its headlong plunge towards extinction.