My temperament did not fit the NPP – Brig-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah

Former Chief of Defence Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces, Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (Rtd) says although he was once a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he never “had what the party stood for.”

The politician who joined the NPP in 1996 after leaving Britain explains that his decision was because, “I didn’t think we were playing our politics the right way.”

He disclosed that he always had leadership quarrels in his home and “my wife one day said to me, look, if you want to change Ghana, go to parliament and cause change and because of that, I had to join a party. I joined the NPP because I had just resigned from the NDC.”

Although he was a member of the NPP back then, he said, “But I don’t believe my temperament was in line with what the NPP stood for. How can a fisherman’s son be a part of the NPP? I am a people’s man by nature and I joined the NPP because I wanted a party to align with. I didn’t think I had what the NPP stood for.”

Asked why he still joined the NPP and stuck with them at the time, he said it was because he wanted to change Ghana “and that was the only way I could achieve my aim”.

“Sometimes, you have to behave in a way to get what you want. Not that I believed in what the NPP were doing back then but I joined them because I wanted to get the platform to speak and be heard. I didn’t go to parliament as an independent candidate because I knew no one would’ve listened to me and when it came to votes, it would’ve been one man against the rest of them and how could I have gotten things done”, he said in an interview on e.TV Ghana’s Fact Sheet show hosted by Samuel Eshun.

Brigadier-General Nunoo-Mensah (Rtd), who is now a member of the Ghana Union Movement (GUM), says his decision to switch camp was because he bought into the idea of the party, the revival of Nkrumahnism.

He was appointed a member of the PNDC on 2 January 1982. He, however, resigned in November 1982 over differences with the late President Rawlings and joined the New Patriotic Party.

The retired Brigadier-General was the campaign manager for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s bid for nomination as the party’s candidate for the Ghanaian presidential elections in 1998.