National Census: Don't speak like a 'notorious village drunkard' - Nana Obiri Boahen to NDC MP

• Nana Obiri Boahen has criticized the MP for the comment he made about the national census

• He has urged Ghanaians to participate in the exercise

• Ahmed Ibrahim had said the government was undertaken the exercise to create new constituencies



Read full articlehref='/GhanaHomePage/people/person.php?ID=3727'>Nana Obiri Boahen, the Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party has taken the deputy Minority Chief Whip Ahmed Ibrahim to the cleaners after he cited political expediency as the basis for the 2021 population census.

In an interview with GhanaWeb, Nana Obiri Boahen minced no words in describing the MPs assertions as ‘rubbish’ and borne out of ignorance.

He labelled the comments as statements of a ‘drunkard’ which should not be entertained by anyone.

He said the population census is a national exercise that should be encouraged and embraced by all persons.

“I have seen that comment and I want to say that and my response is that he should not talk like a notorious village drunkard. I’m saying so because at any point in governance there is the need to know the number of human beings in the country so as to help the government develop strategies. In Finland even the number of parrots are known so if the government wants to know the number of human beings in Ghana, there is nothing wrong with it,”, he said.

“He has established his ignorance with that statement. He shouldn’t be talking like that because creation of constituencies is not done by the government. It is the exclusive preserve of Ghana’s constitution and if he doesn’t have a copy of Ghana’s constitution, I can help him with one”, he said.

Nana Obiri Boahen urged Ghanaians not to heed to the statement by the Banda MP and get themselves counted.

“Ghanaian should ignore that ignorant comment from him. We must all participate in this because it is the population demographics that inform decisions and policies by government,” he said.

Ahmed Ibrahim in an Okay interview said that the census was politically motivated as government was targeting twenty-five new constituencies with the exercise.

“The reason why they are embarking on 2021 population census political is that they are doing it to create the 25 constituencies in the strongholds of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) before the 2024 general elections,” Ahmed Ibrahim posited.

“There was a national engagement in the voter registration exercise but with the 2021 population census, on the quiet, we heard that the enumerators who were considered NDC members have been driven out and replaced with NPP members…the publicity is down as compared to the voter registration exercise because with the voter registration we all knew how the exercise was going to pan out, but not with this exercise,” he asserted. The exercise commenced today, June 28, 2021.