Nana Addo receives rousing welcome in Tamale

Tamale, July 21, GNA- Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has urged Ghanaians to support the Electoral Commission (EC) to conduct the upcoming December elections in a free, fair and transparent manner.

He urged the EC to ensure that the elections were conducted in a transparent manner to ensure that the results would be accepted by both winners and losers.

Nana Akufo-Addo made the appeal in Tamale on Sunday, when he addressed an enthusiastic and huge crowd at the Jubilee Park on his arrival in the Metropolis to begin his four-day campaign tour of the Northern Region.

The crowd earlier had earlier in the afternoon met Nana Addo and his campaign team at the outskirts of Tamale in buses, pick-up vehicles, motor-cycles and on foot, singing the NPP campaign songs and dancing in the Kangaroo dance.

Nana Akufo-Addo was accompanied by members of his campaign team and stalwarts of the party including the Vice- President Alhaji Aliu Mahama, Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, Northern Regional Minister, Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, former Minister of Finance, Alhaji Abubakr Saddique Boniface, Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Mr. Alan Kyeremanten former Trade and Industries Minister and Hajia Alima Mahama, Minister for Women and Children's Affairs.

The NPP Flagbearer told the heavy turn out of people: "Tamale, the heart beat of the Northern Ghana is now the "World Bank" of the NPP". He stressed the need for peace and stability in the country and said there was no need for a single drop of Ghanaian blood to be shed because of the upcoming general elections since the elections were a contest of ideas and not war.

Nana Akufo-Addo said the NPP detested and rejects the politics of divide and rule which pitches sections of the Ghanaians against others adding, "We are all Ghanaians, whether Dagomba or Gonja, Mamprusi or Komkomba or Ewe or Akan or Akyem", with a common destiny.

He reiterated his pledge to bridge the development gap between the North and the South and explained that if voted into power he would ensure that agriculture was seriously promoted in Northern Ghana to make it the breadbasket of the country.

He said this would be done through the construction of several irrigation dams, provision of dams, boreholes and all the necessary agriculture inputs to make farming attractive and rewarding. Nana Akufo-Addo said an NPP government under his leadership would establish a Northern Development Authority directly under the presidency to ensure that all development issues in the northern part of the country were given the necessary attention.

He said the NPP would also expand education facilities in the North to ensure that people in the area were afforded the best quality of education adding that if elected president he would make secondary education also free.

Nana Akufo-Addo reiterated his call on the people of the three Northern Regions to change their pattern, and this time round vote for the NPP, which he said had brought a lot of development to the area, in the next December polls.

Mr. Alan Kyeremanten, a member of the campaign team of Nana Akufo-Addo, described Nana as a courageous man who had fought for the rights of Ghanaians over the last 35 years.

He said he was a man of vision and a unifier who could provide Ghanaians with the needed leadership to take the country forward to its next level of development and therefore urged the electorate to vote massively for Nana and the party's parliamentary candidates in the December general elections.

He said the four compelling reasons why the NPP should be retained in government included its development achievements over the past seven years, the development projects it was still undertaking and the quality of leadership it was providing for Ghanaians.