Two Friends To Clash Over Parliamentary Seat

Two friends from infancy, Prof Christopher Ameyaw Ekumfi (pictured) and I.K. Adjei-Mensah, are posed to lock horns over the parliamentary seat at Techiman North next year.

“I beat him in the 1992 elections and he could not return in 1996 and 2000, because he saw me to be stronger than him,” was how Adjei-Mensah teased his friend over the impending encounter. “The guy simply falls to acknowledge that the order of thing has changed”, a close associate of Ameyaw Ekumfi retorted later. “With his incumbency advantage scrapped, he should count himself lucky if some 4,000 votes separate him and the minister.” Adjei-Mensah was the Member was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Techiman North from 1992 through 2000 and held various portfolios at his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), was in power.

Today, however, the NDC has fallen into opposition and Adjei Mensah has to be content with being appointed mere party whip. On the other hand, Ameyaw Ekumfi, who flunked on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 1992 election and stayed clear of the party’s politics for eight years, is now Minister of Education. His NPP that had just three seats in 1992, in the Brong Ahafo region, is now quite popular in the region.

So something last year, Prof Ekumfi proudly declared, “I will contest and win Techiman North, unseating my good old friend, come 2004”. But the obstinate Adjei-Mensah dismissed the minister’s declaration as “purely political talk”, in an interview at Sunyani, he asserted that all what he was waiting for is the mandate of his party to contest.

And then, he would make a no-match of his old friend. On the relationship between him and Prof. Ekumfi, Mr Adjei-Mensah assured that they remain on the best of terms.