.... and replicate his 94% in 2016

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing" - 2 Timothy 7-8.
I woke up on the morning of Sunday, 19th October, 2014, with the above-quoted Bible scripture on my heart.Intitially, I wondered what the purpose of this scripture had in-store for me for the day because I had no planned schedule for any serious activity to carry out, neither did I have the intension of going to church due to tiredness arising from party activities the previous day. So I laid quietly in my bed and kept my mind racing to ascertain exactly what God wanted to communicate to me; and after a couple of minutes, it dawn on me that the massage was all about the milestone my party NPP had chalked the previous day.

We started this process to some months back, with election of officers at the polling station level, constituency/area coordinators, regional and national officers. This has certainly not come cheap; there have been some toes being stepped-on, skins bruised and bodies dented, during campaigning at all levels of electoral processes. This is to be expected in contests involving human-beings with all our frailties, fallibities, over-zealousness and often the over-drive exuberance to please our respective preferred candidates.

I personally have never considered anything said by any of our party loyalists during the campaigns, as a deliberate attempt to vilify anybody. The true picture is that, people have had to resort to that style of campaign strategy simply because they are not that deep in political communication, and for this reason, I would urge anybody that has been at the receiving-end any form of verbal attack or seemingly raw form of villifcation,to please let out any steam he/she might still be harboring in the system to quickly let loose.

The impressive culmination, yesterday, of all that we started a couple of months ago, should make every single member of the great NPP,be proud of belonging to this VIBRANT,ALL-INCLUSIVE,VISIONARY AND EXCEPTIONALLY WELL-ENDOWED organization. On the African continent, and indeed, in most parts of the globe, our great political tradition is unquestionably, the most vibrant and attractive, with broadest form of mass participation and ownership by members at the very grass-root level. The electoral college of 141,000 being offered the opportunity to be partakers in the exercise to select who leads us into the battle of 2016,is something which is nouvelle in political annals of Africa, and a great deal of authority being invested in ordinary members of the party who do greater part of the work, during national electioneering campaign.

this form of inclusiveness, in my personal estimation, will be a great deal of motivation for our grassroots members to actually have the real sense of belonging and therefore do whatever it takes to ensure the viability of party activism at the very base. A polling station officer, who also now has the right to describe himself as a “DELEGATE”, a tag which used to be the preserve of those high-up the stratified official table, now see himself/herself as a legitimate officer of the party at that level, and will therefore be confident to exert the powers invested in him/her to ensure the interest of the party at that level remains supreme.
Election 2016 is definitely a make or break for the NPP, in the sense that, no party has suffered a third successive defeat since the inception of our fourth republican constitution. An electoral defeat for NPP in 2016 is therefore non-negotiable, convention-wise, and every effort must be made by every single member of the party to ensure a comprehensive electoral holocaust of NDC.

On the broader spectrum, the failure of NPP to win the 2016 election will be a great disservice to the good people of this nation, in that, the party has always demonstrated the capacity to deliver on its campaign promises, even other fruitful human-centered policies, not even captured in it its written manifestos. Ghana today, has become a laughing stock in the eyes of the civilized world, because our state of affairs have been so badly managed to the point where we actually have had to go and lay prostartate,on the bare floor, before IMF just to secure a form of credibility for what is being erroneously termed as “HOME-GROWN” solutions.

Effectively, Ghana, as at now, can be likened to a married man with kids, in a little village, whose ‘akpeteshie-drinking’ spree has completely dissipated his economic existence, and therefore has lost so much respect in his village, that, when he even need a piece of highly aromatic ‘FANTE KAKO’ on credit, his ‘Ebusuapanyin’ has to accompany him to the market for him to be accorded a modicum of credibility. But as characteristic of these shameless NDC insipid, they are able to master the courage to sit on Radio/TV and defend such a gargantuan failure. Ghana has now lost credibility on the international stage, all due to monumental levels of unbridled corruption which has never been witnessed anywhere on this planet since creation.

It is in the light of this that, I believe the over-powering love for Nana Addo in our party and ultimate endorsement of his candidature is very much divine.NPP has the support strength of over 5million Ghanaians; and for this mass of people to willingly gravitate towards a single personality, show him so much love and top it up with a 94.9% endorsement in a competitive elction,actually goes to cement the fact that,indeed,the good people of this nation truly consider him as someone with the competence,drive,patriotism and vision to steer the affairs of state in the right direction.

Naturally, this level of amazing outpouring of love for Nana Addo, didn’t happen by chance, and neither is it by any form of orchestration. In life, it is characteristic of every human to naturally, and instinctively, gravitates towards a person or a place where he/she will be appreciated, loved, respected and encouraged to progress in life. Appearing on Thursday, 16th October, 2014 edition of ‘Good Evening Ghana’ on Mtero-TV, Nana Addo was asked as to what is the secret behind the overwhelming expression of love for him at all levels of the party, and his response was “WHEN PEOPLE, OUT OF LOVE, DECIDE TO FOLLOW YOU, AS A LEADER, THEN, IT IS INCUMBENT ON YOU TO LET THEM APPRECIATE THE FACT THAT YOU VALUE THEM”.
I can personally testify to Nana Addo’s amazing warmth and readiness to always acknowledge your presence in a crowd, by calling you by the name for everybody around to appreciate the fact that he actually knows you. Nana Addo always calls me by my name whenever I walk into his office or home. He returns my calls whenever I try to reach him on phone but couldn’t get through to him. He was able to spot me in a thick crowd of mourners during the funeral of first Eastern Regional NPP chairman at the Koforidua Jackson Park. I was given a rare opportunity to actually be a member of his convoy to Hon Kennedy Ohene-Agyapong’s father’s funeral at Assin-Fosu.even there, Nana Addo, while going round to greet the guests, actually called me by my name while I was busy chatting with some party members and my attention had to be drawn to the fact that Nana Addo was calling me.

As a matter of fact, the ground-swell of love for Nana Addo which has resulted in his lightening success at the congress, ahead of his competitors, is as a result of the man’s UNMATCHED LEVEL OF HUMILITY, GENUINESS OF HEART, SINCERITY IN WHAT HE SAYS AND BELIEVES IN, THE VISION TO MAKE GHANA A BETTER PLACE AND UNQUENCHABLE DESIRE TO SEE GHANA PROSPER.
In much the same vein, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all party members to put behind us, matters of internal bickering and be guided by characteristic character characteristics of Nana Addo, and embrace one-another with brotherly love to enable us work in-tandem from the polling station level to the national level, to enable us replicate Nana Addo’s 94% win in 2016. NPP WILL BE BACK!!!

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei
(Executive Director)
Center for Media Policy