NPP Is Pro-Ashanti - Aidoo

Dr Tony Aidoo, a former Deputy Minister of Defence in the former National Democratic Congress (NDC) government currently in London, has accused the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of being tribalistic –too pro-Ashanti.

He told the Ghana Review International (GRI) in London, “if, you were to go to every Ministry and count heads, you will find that Ashantis are more than anybody else in the government. That’s not the best system of politics of inclusiveness. It is rather evidence of politics of exclusion.” Dr Aidoo added, “For the first time in a period of 20 years, we’ve had a change of government from one regime to another – a good opportunity for national reconciliation.

If they were as good as they thought they were – intellectuals with all the book knowledge and political experience – my strategy would have been to stretch the hand of friendship to my opponent. I’m telling you, if they’d done that, in 2004, they’d win again, whatever we do. But what did they do? Politics of vindictiveness, you criminalise everything that your opponent did. And you see that kind of politics has a terminal point.” Dr Aidoo again repeated some allegations he had made earlier whilst in Ghana, that the NPP, then in opposition prior to the 2000 general elections received “substantial fund” from “personalities within the British labour Party,” the Netherlands and other West Africa countries, especially Nigeria.

A situation, which he said, is “constitutionally unacceptable.” He also said the NPP government had introduced a pattern of oppression, patronage and favouritism. He said should the NDC win the 2004 election, it would not repeat the NPP attitude. Aidoo insisted, “we are not going to do that. It’s not part of our nature. It isn’t! We are going to say that what has happened in the interim four years was in aberration. Because we are not going to rekindle the old politics of divisiveness, tribalism and so on, we leave it at that.”

-On the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), Dr Aidoo had this to say “if we’ve talking about atrocities, like you said, why are they not encapsulating all the periods in Ghana’s political history? Because each regime has had experience of this kind of thing, whether it was constitutional. I was six years old when I saw a woman killed in front of my eyes. It’s never left me.” He then narrated a horrific incident, from the days of ‘mate me ho’ in which six supporters of the United Party (UP) pursued a Fante woman into his great-grandmother’s house in Kumasi, assaulted the woman and murdered her.

The men came from the Asantehene’s palace and were under the command of Baffour Osei-Akoto, the pro-Ashanti political pioneer who died last year. Dr Aidoo then demanded, “why are they not going back to investigate that period?”