Who will rid the NPP of its Akan tag?

The Akan Tag is a big problem for the New Patriotic Party if some are to be believed. This burden is huge and is an obstacle to the party projecting itself as a national party. It is for this reason that some party members are clamouring for the election of the non-Akan Vice President as the NPP flagbearer for the 2024 election. Down with the Akan tag and forward with inclusivity; let’s have a new NPP that embraces all and sundry and gives opportunity to anyone to lead the party. However, I am convinced that the Ghanaian electorate has no truck with this latest round of manure from within the ranks of the NPP.

A political party exists to capture power – nothing more and nothing less. The Danquah-Busia tradition is the confluence of a stream of ideas going back to when the United Gold Coast Convention was formed in 1947. Look around and see what people hold dear to themselves; see what people want from their government and mould your political organization on those lines. This was brought into sharp focus when the leading lights of the UGCC saw the CPP had captured the imagination of the people with its self-government now motto. This helped propel the CPP to power in the 1950s and the UGCC (along with its successor groups) swallowed a bitter pill – but also learned a lesson.

However a hidden current was at play here which planted the seeds for the unstoppable force that is now the NPP – this was the incorporation of the Asante protectorate into the Gold Coast in 1946. Comprising modern Asante and the now 3 Bono regions, the voting population of the colony had doubled overnight and while they might want self-government now, this is not going to be their only cry. Once self-government is attained they will have a new set of beliefs and demands and whoever pitches to them once the independence euphoria is over, will have a huge electoral advantage. This bloc is a monster Akan bloc with similarities in the following areas: language, custom, economic way of life such as farming, traditional governance, dress etc and lo and behold this bloc has formed up behind the New Patriotic Party. Early glimpses of its power were demonstrated in 1979 when 2 parties born out of the UGCC fire showed what they could do if united. The division served as a lesson - unite or perish. Come 1992 and the grounds for organization and capture of power were rocky as the electoral landscape was tilted in faovur of an incumbent who was apprehensive about the loss of power. Nevertheless the Danqauh-Busia tradition soldiered on. 1996 was another decisive moment as with victory in only one region (Asante with just 65 percent of the vote) the tradition had almost 40 percent of the vote. Come 2000 the party has not looked back except the second round of the 2008 election and the 2012 election.

This happy band of soldiers have benefitted immensely from association with the Akan group. Being tagged as an Akan-dominated party has been a magnet for the millions of Akan votes and this way non-Akans have benefitted too. A political party without a stronghold is like a football team without a goalkeeper. Imagine Asante Kotoko in the 1960s and 1970s with the incomparable wizard dribbler Osei Kofi, the lethal striking ability of Abukari Gariba, and the midfield skills of Sunday Ibrahim – but no Robert Mensah in goal. The Akan bloc is the rock on which the NPP is built. In the United Kingdom the Conservative Party is the party of the English and in recent memory they have chosen only one non-English leader – Michael Howard (who led them to defeat). This has not prevented it from being the dominant political party in the UK. Moreover, it still wins seats in all other parts of the UK. The NDC has no Akan tag yet it wins seats in Akan areas and so why is the NPP being subjected to this Akan tag issue? There was no Akan issue in the 1992 flagbearer race, or 1995 or 1998 or 2007 so how come we are now being infected with a virus that is making a crisis out of nothing. I am sure the CPP, PNC etc would love to have an Akan tag and harvest large chunks of the votes that they long for in the Akan parts of Ghana.

The NPP should elect as flagbearer the person who appeals to the voters. Akan voters alone will never elect the party to power – there are Krobos, Sisalas, Dagombas, Anlos, Gas etc and all their votes are essential but no one should attack the NPP that it has an obligation to a new entrant who joined in 2008 (he was nowhere to be seen in 1992 when the going was tough) just to lose a tag that has not been an electoral problem in the 4th republic.

No one has produced a shred of evidence that the entire voting population of the country – apart from the 46 percent Akans will flee to the NDC if the VP is not chosen to lead. The NPP defeat in 2008 was not down to being an Akan-dominated party, it was down to a bad campaign, the sidelining of President Kufuor and the divisions that were not patched up after the 2007 contest to choose the leader. The poor showing in 2012 was due to the failure to organize at the polling station level and the near calamity of the 2020 election was down to imposition of candidate’s across the constituencies.

Frightening the NPP into choosing someone on the basis that he is not an Akan is an insult to the likes of Aliu Mahama. It is an insult to the legendary BJ Da Rocha whose brother Ambrose Da Rocha was tortured to death on January 13th 1972 while BJ himself was in detention without trial for more than a year. It is an insult to the Obetsebi-Lamptey family whose patriarch was buried alive in the cause of the struggle. It heaps abuse on ERT Madjitey who spent 2 years in prison in the 1960s for reasons yet to be explained to him. So many non-Akans have rallied to the Danquah-Busia tradition without a single thought for ethnicity – Alhaji Yakubu Tali, Alhaji Malik Alhassan, Adam Amandi, Jato Kaleo etc. They fought to build and sustain the tradition over the turbulent years and now that it is a formidable force, along comes someone who never went to a NPP rally before 2008 and who cannot point to a single family member who was there when Osei Assibey, Baffour Osei Akoto and others were chained in the cells in Nsawam in the 1950s and 1960s.

The sooner the NPP rids itself of this fairy tale about the Akan tag the better. If anyone who thinks their ethnic background is a problem for them in the NPP then I suggest they scurry back to their true CPP/NDC roots and make cause with a tradition that celebrates the overthrow of the 3rd Republic in order to check Akan hegemony. The fact that the PNP administration got the bulk percentage of its votes from Northern Ghana and had a large northern block of ministers seems to have been lost on observers Let’s get behind Alan Kyerematen – a dyed in the wool Danquah-Busia stalwart, a founding member of the NPP who trekked the nation with Prof Adu-Boahen and JA Kufuor, who is from a family of gallant patriots that raised the Danquah-Busia flag in the 1950s and led from the front to do battle for our cause.

NPP members unite – there is absolutely no Akan tag to lose, there is power to win!

Alan all the way