Nana Addo: Appointed by JAK, challenged by Agyapong, stopped by the porcupine!

Kwabena Nyamkye

Nana Akuffo Addo was appointed Attorney General and then Foreign Minister in the Kufuor administration. It was these 2 high profile positions that enabled him make a serious and successful bid to lead the great NPP in 2007. He was also given a good track record of economic and social achievements and a stable political party – something that no NPP presidential candidate ever enjoyed in our history. Yet when he was elected flag bearer he made a conscious decision to exclude Kufuor from his 2008 campaign. He went into battle against John Mills, at the time half blind and half deaf and yet Ghanaians opted for Mills over him. Then in 2012 he campaigned on a message of the past, calling on voters to remember the NPP of old. He met John Mahama on the battlefield and was wiped out one more time. Now most people thought he should quit but his supporters in the party devised a cunning and deadly strategy which in my view will probably destroy the NPP for good in the near future – “No Nana No Vote” was the clarion call as he saw disaster looming in the wake of the NPP 2014 Tamale congress. Of course what this meant was that if you do not vote for me I will ensure my supporters stay at home on Election Day and we are likely to lose the 2016 vote. In the wake of this veiled threat and with memories of how he had destroyed us in 1979 with the UNC, the party as a whole caved in and voted for Nana Addo one more time to lead us. The problem of course is that this strategy has worked and future candidates for flag bearer will use it in if we are not careful. How divisive and destructive!

However the party before the flag bearer election had chosen the Kwabena Agyapong, a formidable person, with a no-nonsense approach, as General Secretary and unknown to anyone this was to result in a big clash between him and Nana Addo. Now Nana Addo spent his youth in the CPP and in that political tradition, the party was at the beck and call of the leader – Kwame Nkrumah. Perhaps this was understandable as Nkrumah had formed the party by himself and he had scored repeated electoral victories to reinforce this claim to be the boss of all the bosses in the CPP. But not so in the Danquah-Busia tradition. We have a different more egalitarian approach and no one “owns” the party. So on the one hand we have Kwabena Agyapong a true Danquah-Busia man with a sense that the party machine should be bigger than anyone, and on the other hand we have a CPP man, Nana Addo with the view that the party is his private property just because the delegates have been intimidated into voting for him.

Right after Agyapong was elected General Secretary, Nana Addo’s supporters adopted a 2-pronged approach to owning and controlling the party: first degrade the role of the General Secretary (and Chairman) by getting regional executives to challenge and undermine their every decision, and second, start a process to remove them altogether. Now this seemed to be working as after the death of Adams Mahama, NPP regional chairmen met to plot the impeachment of Agyapong (and Afoko). It seemed as if Nana Addo was about to win the battle as Central, Eastern, Accra and other regions rallied to his cause with B/A just tilting to Agyapong. But then suddenly, the indomitable porcupine opened fire from its base in Kumasi and the attempt to stage a coup and own the NPP was slain at a meeting in Kumasi. Nana Addo was forced to acknowledge defeat when he held a press conference calling on normalization of affairs within the party! He knows that without the might of the porcupine he is nothing in Ghanaian politics. His team must have told him that Asanteman gave JAK a 1 million vote majority over Mills in 2004 thus ensuring a one touch victory. In 2008, in the wake of ignoring JAK and Alan Kyerematen during the campaign, Asanteman’s 2 highest profile politicians Asanteman cut back its votes and gave Nana Addo just a majority of 750,000 over Mills in round 1. If Nana had a majority similar to JAK in 2004, the 2008 election was his. There will have been no run off and today the NDC will probably be in disarray having been whipped twice by JAK and once by Nana Addo! Even in 2012 if Nana Addo had a majority of a million that JAK enjoyed he fall short of Mahama by 38000 votes and this ensures a run-off with all possibilities open to the electorate.

The lesson here is don’t mess with the porcupine! Nana Addo needs to atone for his attacks on Asante politicians: Victor Owusu, JAK, Alan Kyerematen, and Kwabena Agyapong have been his target for reasons known only to him. Well the porcupine has shown its quills and Nana Addo’s attempt to run the party like a plantation with all the workers doing his bidding without question has is over. He knows that if he antagonizes the Asante region he can kiss 2016 goodbye and he will leave politics as the worst flag bearer in the history of the Danquah-Busia tradition.

Before I go a note of caution: There is an ugly assumption that when Nana Addo leaves the scene he will “give it” to Bawumia. This sounds as if the position of flag bearer is the property of Nana Addo to hand to whom he likes when he likes. Even if he loses in 2016, and this seems to be very likely given his display of bad leadership over the past few weeks, on his way out he will tell the party to elect Bawumia leader. Now I have no issues with anyone at all leading the NPP but I do have issues with the process being fixed. I can assure all and sundry in the NPP that the porcupine is watching this development with keen interest and will strike with the speed of a cobra, the power of a lion and the ferocity of a hungry bear should anyone try to give anything to anyone.

No one in the NPP can come to power as president on the back of an angry Asanteman. Nana Addo has been cut down to size, his plans for party ownership blown to bits by the powerhouse of the Danquah-Busia tradition. He thought no one could challenge him in the NPP; he obviously forgot that the porcupine never goes looking for a fight but will engage and destroy you should you decide to take it on. It has survived all attempts to grind down its influence and power.

NPP take note.