Savelugu NPP Women's Organiser threatens to quit over DCE nominee

Hajia Kande, the Savelugu constituency Women’s Organiser of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), has warned she will resign if the president’s nominee for District Chief Executive for her area, Hajia Ayishetu Seidu, is maintained.

According to her, the president’s nominee is not known to constituency executives, therefore, they cannot work with her in prosecuting the NPP’s agenda for change.

On Wednesday April 26 the president released the list of DCE nominees to be approved by assembly members in their respective districts. However, some members of the party, including Hajia Kande, have expressed disappointment with the list announced by the Local Government Minister Hajia Alima Mahama, at a press conference on Wednesday.

Speaking in an interview with Chief Jerry Foson, host of Ghana Yensom, on Accra100.5FM on Thursday April 27, Hajia Kande said: “We don’t know her in this district. She doesn’t even vote in this constituency and so we don’t want her.

“She never showed her face during the campaign and so we don’t know where she is coming from. We don’t want her. She could be a member of the NPP in other areas but we want people from our constituency who really toiled for the party to come back to power.

“We are appealing to the president to change the nominee. She doesn’t know the district, she is not known and so if she becomes the DCE it will anger the grassroots of the party in the district and the constituency. I will resign as the constituency Women’s Organiser for Savelugu if the president maintains her as DCE because the executives of the party can’t work with her; she is not known.”

Responding to the threat of resignation, the Northern Regional Secretary of the NPP, Sule Salifu, called Hajia Kande’s bluff, asking her to resign if she so wished.

According to him, executives of the party must be seen to be showing support for the decision taken by the President in order not to undermine his authority.

He added: “Some people think that mounting political platform is the only way you can be recognised as a true party person or when the president comes and you are available that is when you are seen as a party person. But as regional secretary, I have come to realise that those who even contribute financially towards the party’s activities are much more important because if people don’t contribute resources, how do you move to the 31 constituencies in the North to organise and prosecute the party’s campaign? So I am saying on authority that the president has nominated the right people for the region and everybody must accept them. We should support them to go through the confirmation process so that they kick-start the agenda for change in our region.

“She [Hajia Kande] can resign! This is a woman whose husband was a contestant for the position of DCE in the Savelugu district and so why wouldn’t she be peeved? Her husband was one of the applicants for DCE in Savelugu and so why won’t she be angry?

"The last person who should make such threatening and useless comment is a party executive and I am highly disappointed that a Women’s Organiser of a constituency will be sending such bad signals.

"We are party officials, we voted for Nana Addo to become the flag bearer of the NPP, we campaigned alongside him to be elected as President of Ghana and so we should be the last people to engineer any process against the voice and authority of the President and I am saying the Women’s Organiser for Savelugu, her husband, also contested to be elected as DCE so if your husband was elected and people were protesting would you be happy?"