Ephson warns Mosquito: You could fall on your own dagger of arrogance

Pollster Ben Ephson has said the General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia risks falling on his own dagger of pomposity if he continues clothing himself with arrogance.

“If even the Founder [Jerry John Rawlings] of the party has been cut down to size, how much more the General Secretary?” Ephson asked in an interview with Kafui Dey on Morning Starr Monday.

According to him, the 666 votes garnered by Abdula Ishaq Farrakhan – the unknown and only challenger of Johnson Asiedu Nketia – in the party’s General Secretary race in the just-ended congress, was a protest vote against the three-time Secretary.

Asiedu Nketia, known more by his alias ‘General Mosquito’, won the race by 2,685 votes, representing 82 percent of ballots cast in his category at the delegates’ congress held on Saturday December 20, 2014 at the Baba Yara stadium in the Ashanti regional capital, Kumasi.

Prior to the congress, Nketia threatened to pull out of the race if delegates showed support to traitor-candidates.

That statement was interpreted by political pundits, including Ephson, to be a veiled swipe at the party founder’s Spokesperson, Kofi Adams who ran for the national organiser slot against Nketia’s favourite Yaw Boateng Gyan, the incumbent.

A voice suspected to be that of Adams was heard on a secret tape unearthed a few years ago, conspiring with opposition elements against President John Mills (late). Ephson believes Asiedu Nketia was making reference to that incident to brand Adams a traitor and disloyal person not worth being in the NDC’s leadership circle.

Adams has, however, always insisted on his innocence and said he never betrayed the party as alleged against him.

Ephson told Kafui Dey that Nketia’s pull out threat ahead of the congress smacked of arrogance, which he warned could undo the former Legislator. He said the performance of his greenhorn challenger in the congress shows how Nketia could easily shoot himself in the foot with his own arrogance.

“Asiedu Nketia obviously had a bit of a voter-backlash for that comment he made that if certain persons were not elected, he wasn’t going to contest. That statement was a bit unfortunate and the 600 votes Farrakhan got…is a message to Asiedu Nketia that you can’t be pompous,” he stressed, adding that if the influence of even former President Rawlings is waning in the party, then how much more Gen Mosquito.