Stop calling Akufo-Addo "grandpa" – Kwabena Adjei tells NDC

Stop referring to Nana Akufo-Addo as an old man and grandfather, national chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Kwabena Adjei has admonished supporters and leaders of his party.

“I simply don’t like it. Why grandpa? Me too I’m a grandpa. So is it a crime to become grandpa?” he wondered in an exclusive interview with Ibrahim Alhassan of starr news.

Akufo-Addo, three-time Flag-bearer of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), will be 72 years old in 2016, as he attempts, for the third consecutive time, to win the presidency.

The former foreign affairs Minister’s critics and political opponents have constantly made reference to his age as a disadvantage, vis-à-vis that of President John Mahama, who will be 58 years old in 2016, and will be slugging it out, for the second time, with Akufo-Addo in the 2016 elections.

However, 71-year-old Dr Adjei, who is a few months older than the former Attorney General, and is also contesting to three people to retain his position as chairman of the NDC for the third consecutive time, despite the age card being played against him by his opponents, said: “We in the 70s, we’re a few–about five or so percent of the Ghanaian population–we are a treasured generation.”

“If the young ones refuse to take our wisdom and our experiences from us, we’ll be lost. We’ll be a lost generation,” the former Minister who served in the Rawlings administration said.

He put up a strong defence of Akufo-Addo’s decision to run for the presidency for a third time despite his age.

“I don’t think that any person who is worth his salt and who comes out to say: ‘I want to be a leader’ must be brought down. Nana Addo has a democratic right to stand as a leader. That’s the way I see him.

“He hasn’t done anything wrong, in much the same if I want to stand as a President, which I don’t want to do, nobody should say I’m an old man so I should not stand, because the wisdom and the intelligence and the strength I have, are not even present in some of the youngest ones who believe that they are good,” Dr Adjei argued.