Stan Dogbe must be relegated to ‘back office’ – Mahama campaign officer suggests

Former presidential staffer Stan Dogbe may be assigned a new role should the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party come back to power, a member of the John Mahama campaign has suggested.

The move, according to former Ghana High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Victor Smith, would be to reduce the volume of complaints people have leveled against Mr. Dogbe when he handled media relations at the presidency.

Mr. Smith, however, acknowledged that he can only suggest that Mr. Dogbe be reassigned but the decision is entirely John Mahama’s to make.

“I’m unable to comment on that but the [former] president will make that decision with his campaign team,” he said.

“I would say that because of the volume of complaints about a particular person that in their estimation may have contributed to the dislike of the President at any point in time, we may have to reassign him a back office role to play a different role so that this sort of thing doesn’t continue,” Mr. Smith stressed.

Mr. Dogbe was one of the heavily criticized in the erstwhile John Mahama administration. Key party members including Alban Bagbin had accused him of preventing party stalwarts from getting close to Mr Mahama, thus causing the defeat of the party in 2016.

But Mr. Smith thinks Stan Dogbe “did a good job to some extent but it could have been better”.

According to him, Stan Dogbe did his best handling the media at the presidency and if there were things that he did to the displeasure of the media, then it is regrettable.

“He was doing what he could at the time, if that created a wedge between the president and the media people, it’s unfortunate and I apologise,” he said.