Dome Kwabenya: The end of Adwoa Safo’s dominance defined in NPP constituency elections?

The Dome Kwabenya Constituency has been in the news recently and so has its Member of Parliament, Sarah Adwoa Safo.

Her absence from parliament, described by some members of her party, the ruling New Patriotic Party, as a betrayal, led to concerns about her

Read full articlestatus in the party among the issues that has since come out of the controversies surrounding Sarah Adwoa Safo.

The three-term member of parliament has yet to give any indication of a decision to end her parliamentary career at the end of her current term despite several attempts to write her off.

Before her recent controversies, Sarah Adwoa Safo, even with her proven dominance in the NPP stronghold of Dome Kwabenya, had a stiff competition in Mike Oquaye Junior.

The former Ghanaian Ambassador to India had gone toe-to-toe with Adwoa Safo in a fierce battle for the NPP’s parliamentary candidature ahead of the 2016 elections and lost by a margin of 8 only votes.

Ahead of the commencement of the party’s internal elections, a lot of eyes were placed on the Dome Kwabenya Constituency.

On Sunday, May 1, 2022 when it finally got to the turn of NPP delegates in the Dome Kwabenya Constituency to elect executives of the party, there was a simmering distinction between candidates on the lines of allegiance between the incumbent MP, Sarah Adwoa Safo, and her regular contender at the party level, Mike Ocquaye Junior.

When GhanaWeb’s reporter on the grounds of the delegates conference questioned some of the candidates about the Adwoa Safo and Oquaye factions, they tended to be politically correct in their answers and sought to avoid a direct answer.

However, at the close of polls, it had become clear the actual interests vested in the outcome of the elections.

The phrase 10:0 (ten-zero) begun flying around the Kwabenya M/A 5 School where the event was held as one faction jubilated while another was sober.

In the heat of the jubilation, a member of the winning faction, Kwasi Frimpong who is the Electoral Area Coordinator for Taifa North A, gave an insight into the dynamics of the result.

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“In order to understand the ten-zero, one needs to understand the dynamics of politics in Dome Kwabenya. We have Honourable Adwoa Safo and we have Oquaye. Honourable Sarah Adwoa Safo selected ten candidates and entreated delegates to vote for them because they are the ones she was wants to work with.

“Oquaye also supported ten candidates and last four years it was Oquaye’s ten who won. Adwoa Safo had none and that has been repeated today. We started from the coordinator’s election, 18 slots were up for grabs, Sarah Adwoa Safo’s team won 2 and Oquaye’s team had 16. Today we have voted to elect constituency officers and the ten-zero that occurred four years ago has been repeated,” he stated.

On what the results of Sunday’s constituency executives’ election result implied, Kwasi Frimpong said “What it implies is that Honourable Sarah Adwoa Safo should continue to stay in America because we don’t need her in Ghana any longer because Dome Kwabenya has rejected her.

“When the NPP needed her to pass E-Levy, she refused to come, however we managed to pass the E-Levy and today E-Levy is being implemented. So we have no use of Adwoa Safo in Dome Kwabenya,” he added.

Despite how the dynamics may look in terms of Adwoa Safo versus Mike Oquaye Junior and their support base amongst party delegates and executives in Dome Kwabenya who will vote to decide who leads the party in 2024, the prospects of the MP cannot entirely be written off.

With the same ten-zero, Adwoa Safo, four years ago, beat Mike Oquaye Junior by a slim margin of 8 votes, except that the circumstance is quite different now.

The MP’s popularity within the NPP from the constituency to the national level, has very much declined. This is a result of her continuous absence from parliament following the end of her extended leave somewhere last year.