Where Are The Northern Politicians?

One day a colleague parliamentary candidate from one of the constituencies in the Ashanti region of Ghana called me for us to share ideas and strategies on winning our various parliamentary seats. We had very prudent discussions and at the end of the conversation we both agreed that, it was never going to be easy for us to succeed without support from friends, family, fans and party members.

It came out during the conversation that, in the Ashanti region, former government officials under the NPP administration are helpful to their parliamentary candidates in ways aimed at winning their various seats.

In the Northern region the reverse is the case. Former government officials are behaving as if they have resigned from politics and will not want anything from the NPP when we come back to power on January 7, 2013.

We have Association of Northern parliamentary candidates through which we share ideas and other campaign stuff. I therefore know for sure that, we are not receiving support from these former Northern Ministers and other appointees.

I have had occasion to suggest to some of them that, if they don’t have the resources to support us, then they should recommend us to persons who can support the campaign process in kind or in cash.

Some of them have the funny excuse of saying that, “December is still far” and I always ask “Which December”? The campaign is a process and not a single big bang! It is the process we are saying should be supported not only that single day on December 7th.

We have social activities to attend, we have donations to make to students and other Youth groups and we have a big task of getting our people out to register and to monitor these biometric registration exercise. We need to get the people who will vote for us to first register. All these involve a budget. We don’t have gargantuan money to meet these budgets.

We know it is our duty as parliamentary candidates to mobilize resources to do our campaigns. We also know that, getting in touch with persons who benefitted from the NPP and who will still benefit when we come back to government is also one of our resource mobilization strategies. It is optional for such people to help but it is also necessary for them to support so that, we win our seats for all of us.

I was therefore very pleased when Dr. Nyarho Tamakloe recently in an interview on North Star FM in Tamale called on Northern politicians to move away from corridors of the NPP in Accra to help in their various constituencies.

Some of these ex- appointees have themselves at a point in time contested for parliamentary elections and can therefore be of immense support to us in terms of strategies among other things.

It is not a good thing for some of them to “lock” themselves up in Accra only to run here and look busy any time Nana/Bawumia are coming to the region. We need you here come and join the campaign process.

Wining in December should be a non negotiable venture. All those who can support us should endeavor to help. I have personally received support in kind and in cash from some friends inside and outside the country. Some of them I have met but some I have never met them but they still agreed to support with their widows mite.

Let us win Tamale North and Ghana together! Reach out to support the Akilu Sayibu for parliament project. Let us win together. It is my turn today to solicit for your support it will be a classical case of “One good turn deserves another” tomorrow.

No support is small come on board folks.

Akilu Sayibu is the NPP parliamentary candidate for Tamale North.

My contact email is Akilu.sayibu@live.uwe.ac.uk