Togbe Afede Is former NPP Candidate!

In what is sure to come as a shock to many, information available to The Statesman shows that the Agbogbomefia of the Asogli Traditional Council, Togbe Afede XVI, was once a parliamentary candidate of the New Patriotic Party. The renowned chief, who recently accused the NPP government of making him and others in the Volta Region “feel like strangers in Ghana,” was penciled in for the Ho West Constituency on the ticket of the NPP in the 1992 general elections.

He only failed to be an MP because the NPP boycotted the parliamentary elections following allegations of systematic massive rigging of the presidential elections by the National Democratic Congress. The two polls were scheduled to be held on different days.

Speaking at a durbar of chiefs organised in honour of President Mills at Ho over the weekend, the Asogli chief accused the Kufuor administration of neglecting the Volta Region and its citizens during its eight year tenure. Reading a number of text messages he claimed had been sent by some of his subjects, Togbe Afede said the region had always kept faith with the NDC because of the NPP’s neglect of people with Voltarians descent. Ironically, the claim was made at the Jubilee Park, built by the NPP administration.

Checks however indicate that the renowned chief’s pronouncements were very far from the truth. Indeed, some members of the Kufuor administration quietly wondered why the Presdient chose to virtually ignore his traditional political support bases of Ashanti,

Eastern and Central regions and concentrated so much attention on the Volta region, sometimes to the detriment of his own party members, when the political returns were so slim.

The regional received its fair share, sometimes more than its share, of national development programmes including the National Health Insurance Scheme, School Feeding Programme, and the National Youth Employment Programme. For instance, the largest

number of beneficiary districts under the Millennium Challenge Account Programme is in the Volta Region. All major roads in the region have either been reconstructed or are in the process of being reconstructed. The Keta Sea Defence Wall project was finally executed by the NPP administration after years of broken promise by the NDC.

Togbe Afede, who is also Presdient of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs, was a major beneficiary of the NPP’s policy of creating an enabling environment for business and appointing qualified persons to positions of authority and public office devoid of ethnic or partisan considerations. Indeed, Presdient Kufuor ignored a recommendation by then Finance Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo that Dr Donkor Fordjuor be appointed to the Board of the Bank of Ghana and appointed Togbe Afede instead.

In the same vein, the Kufuor administration facilitated the travel of a delegation of Volta Chiefs led by Togbe Afede to China to negotiate with the Shenzhen Energy Group for the establishment of a private power plant in Ghana. Government also facilitated the

acquisition of land at Kpone as the site of the Sunon Asogli Power (Ghana) Limited. Togbe Afede is a Director of the company. Due to his knowledge in the arena of finance, the Kufuor administration, when it sought to raise funds in the international market through the sale of bonds, contracted Strategic African Securities, found by Togbe Afede, to undertake the venture. The bonds were oversubscribed several times over.

Since the pronouncements last Saturday, Asogli Chief has come under a barrage of condemnation, with not a hint of apology emanating from his palace. In the view of Kenwuud Nuworsu, Volta Region NPP Chairman, the statements “were not only unfortunate but irresponsible,” since many prominent citizens of the region were members of the NPP. The Ga Dangme Forward movement has called on the Asogli Chief to apologise and retract what they described as his “divisive ethnic statements.”

The group described the chief’s statement as an attempt to warm up to another government by dabbling in the dangerous phenomenon of ethnic politics. Noting that the Kufuor administration helped in raising the status of Togbe Afede to be one of the most respected chiefs in Ghana, they said “it is therefore disheartening that with the change in government Togbe Afede will be shooting himself down in this manner.”

Interestingly, not a single member of the NDC or the Mills administration has come out to condemn Togbe Afede for his ethnic-tinged divisive statements.