Prior to the 2024 general elections, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo urged the members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to maintain their unity.
Additionally, he urged the party to select a flagbearer candidate who could defeat John Dramani Mahama, the NDC’s presidential candidate.
On Wednesday, August 2, 2023, Mr. Akufo-Addo spoke these words to New Patriotic Party representatives who visited him at Jubilee House, the location of the country’s president.
President Akufo-Addo indicated that the Party cannot afford to let what happened to it in 2008 happen again in 2024 in response to a request made by the NPP Director of Communications, Mr. Richard Ahiagbah, over the Party’s conduct in next year’s election.
From 2009 to 2017, the successor NDC Government, in which John Dramani Mahama played a key role, “were all witnesses to the derailing of the achievements chalked up by President John Agyekum Kufuor,” the President said.
Akufo-Addo Blast NDC and Mahama; check out the reason
He claimed that during the final eight years of the NDC government, “we gained notoriety for all the right reasons. Any optimism Ghanaians had for long-term economic prosperity was dashed by four years of dumsor, poor economic management, risky energy contracts, and blatant corruption. We must never allow this to occur again.
President Akufo-Addo highlighted that some actions by a few party members are dominating the front pages for the wrong reasons as the final round of internal NPP contests got underway.
Instead of attacking our opponents, we spend some of our energy flinging insults at one another and making fun of our own government. For everyone who loves our party and believes we are the party that can advance and flourish our country, it has been a stressful moment, he remarked.
As the de facto leader of the Party and President of the Republic, President Akufo-Addo added, “I want to make sure that certain past behaviours that contributed to our defeat in 2008 are not repeated. An internal campaign motivated by racial or religious factors is not something we can afford.
The President referred to the NPP as “the Party of Ghana’s Unity” and vehemently denied claims made by a small number of NPP members who, as a result of internal party politics, are holding my government responsible for allegedly “intimidating” and “coercing” party members to support the Vice President, one of the party’s presidential candidates. It is a deceptive and wicked story.
He declared to the Party’s communicators that no one in the Party could claim that he, President Akufo-Addo, had requested their support for one candidate over another.
“I have not sought to remove any MMDCE or political appointee from their positions because they have supported a particular candidate; no Minister or Deputy Minister has been fired or threatened because they have publicly supported their preferred presidential candidate; and no caveat has come from Jubilee House to the Party across the length and breadth of the nation requiring that Candidate A be supported over Candidate B. I know that this is not the way to go better than anyone in the Party,” he said.
Whoever runs for president “will be chosen freely and transparently by an Electoral College of approximately two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) people and not by President Akufo-Addo,” according to the president. Like every executive at a polling place around the nation, I only have one vote.
But he said he would “cast that vote for an aspirant who, in my opinion, can best unite the Party and, above all, who can win the presidential election of December 7, 2024, and inflict a third consecutive defeat on the perennial NDC Presidential Candidate, John Dramani Mahama.”
President Akufo-Addo is working towards two goals: victory for the NPP in the 2024 elections and the transfer of power to an NPP presidential candidate who has received legitimate support from the Ghanaian people. He expects all NPP members to share these objectives.
“I presume that we all want to see our party win the 2024 elections handily, our parliamentary candidates win the majority of seats in the legislature once more, and our flagbearer take office as president of the republic. Arguments about how to carry out this agenda are both expected and welcome.
However, I do not anticipate or accept that party members would take any action to jeopardise the objective we have set for ourselves—winning the 2024 elections—and I will cooperate with everyone who seeks this goal, he continued.
Regarding the economy, President Akufo-Addo emphasised that Ghana would have experienced a boom if not for the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This follows three (3) years in a row in which Ghana was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, recording an annual GDP growth rate of 7%, up from three-point-four percent (3.4%), the lowest in a generation, which the NPP inherited from the previous administration.
We are experiencing a change in our fortunes, and this change will be perpetuated by the Grace of Almighty God, suitable policies, and hard labour. We are not going to waste this, and no scheme will make us less strong.
We shall put in a lot of effort over the next sixteen (16) months to successfully complete our current mandate, earn the Ghanaian people’s trust and confidence once more, break the eight, and create history as a team.