Akufo-Addo Is The Real Deal

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, over the weekend made a quick low key campaigning dash across the Western Region on the blind side of President J. A. Kufuor, who was also in the western regional capital after his previous week’s extensive delegates hunt across nearly all 19 constituencies in the Central Region.

Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo, started off at Daboase, and swept through the five SAEMA districts (Takoradi, Sekondi, Effiakuma, Shama, etc), snaking through Axim by press time, repeating his message but varying it slightly, depending on the quality of interaction and reactions, but essentially spending more time defending himself.

Addressing separate meetings of delegates of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) here in the Western Region at separate constituencies to canvass for votes, Nana Akufo Addo, defending himself from issues similar to the ones that confronted him in the Central Region – that he is too belligerent; a dangerous person into whose hands the destiny of our country should not be entrusted.

To him, if indeed he was that much of a bellicose temperament, he would not have aided in bringing peace to countries like Liberia and Cote‘d’ivoire where he worked with his boss President Kufuor to bring peace: “Why would I set my own country on fire if I ‘m given the mandate to govern this country?” he demanded rhetorically.

Plugging himself further, he reminded the delegates that his name alone, ‘ Nana’ means the chief in the local Akan dialect, suggesting that fate has already settled on him as the President-elect among his colleagues contesting for the same office. Akufo Addo, who spoke in both Twi and English, parted with one hundred thousand cedis to each of the executives he spoke with here.

His tour coincided with the opening ceremony of a three-day annual conference for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives, which his boss, the President opened last Friday. Continuing, Akufo Addo also defended himself on persistent perceptions that he is arrogant in some political circles, and stoutly insisted that he is proud to optimize his arrogance in his fight against the dictatorial rule of the PNDC. "Perhaps my mouth was a gun…where were the others", he told the delegates, urging them to consider that and cast their votes for him.

At each stop, with about ten top brand vehicles (land cruisers) cruising in a motorcade, and sirens wailing, scampering rural goats along the dirt streets of Enyan Abaasa and further afield to Axim, Nana Akufo Addo rolls his stocky, squat frame out, escorted by a couple of heavies and with the gait of a president-elect, address his audience.

From Mfantseman East through to Sekondi, he reiterated a four-fold criterion he insists must be used by delegates of these two most crucial regions, which hold the key to which of the two major contending parties can win the next general election, with or without a coalition partner.

This was the very first tour of Nana Addo, nearly eight months after at least five fellow aspirants - Dr.Addo Kufuor, Konadu Apraku and Allan Kyeremanten, the only contestant without a constituency but who currently enjoys a frontline status (according to Chronicle’s intelligence assessment) had done nationwide tour disbursing funds to help the party and assuage the parched throats of weary delegates. Consistently, the post-visit comments were largely disappointing, as far as the size of envelopes were concerned: ‘Too light’, some complained of the weight of the envelope they received, contrasting that with the ‘help’ and the frequency with which they received ‘motivators’ from Addo Kufuor, Allan and the best of all, Professor Mike Oquaye (who helped with as much as ¢4 million per constituency executives), small fortunes compared with Nana’s ¢100,000.00. Incredibly, the delegates say that they know this may be the only time they would see ‘them’ until they become President and become inaccessible. This is a crucial determinant in the criterion of the delegates.

EXECUTIVES VERSUS POLLING STATION EXECUTIVES To top it up, while Allan and Addo Kufuor are now engaging all polling station executives in their hunt for delegates, Akufo Addo was now limiting his interactions to regional and constituency executives, shutting out these foot soldiers who are being empowered with corn mills, water pumps to assist them in income generation enterprises and motor cycles to aid in the spreading of the NPP message to the nooks and crannies of the country.

To the several who spoke to this reporter and the Central regional Bureau, some delegates were very bitter about the way Nana Addo used his newspaper, The Statesman to pour scorn on the man Oquaye, who had been assisting them with most of the things Nana has refused to help them with.

NANA ADDO’S FOUR-FOLD CRITERIA The Abuakwa MP charged the delegates to look for four things when evaluating the presidential aspirants. He said the person should be someone who is a core party member, a puritan in the NPP tradition; a candidate who is reconciliatory in nature, a candidate who is winnable and can win not just the delegate’s congress, but the general election as well and finally, a candidate who can provide political leadership, not just management.

Using his own benchmarks, Nana Addo then went on to close the argument that he is the real deal, the one who stands tall along these entire political scoring card.

His team, include Mr. Nich Adi Darko, Managing Director of Prestige Motors, Obiri and Mr. Victor Newman, also known as Kofi Adjitornu, the overall strategist and Boss of the Friends of Akufo Addo (FONAA), the political club formed to propagate Akufo Addo’s vision and propel him to victory.

However, at Cape Coast, where Allan Kyeremanten had fully exploited his Elmina connections and was the first candidate to engage the delegates, he faced troubling questions, when his age was made an issue.

First Nana Akufo Addo is older than Prof. Mike Oquaye, who was mates with him at the University of Ghana in 1964, having both been born in 1944, actively serving as a Convention People’s Party (CPP) activist while at Legon, while Oquaye remained a true blue ‘UP’ man on campus. On the issue of age that Allan Kyeremanten has been making an issue of, he rebutted this by saying that there is nothing wrong with being youthful. He however, reminded his audience that ‘there are bad young men just as there may be bad older men too.

He noted that his record as Attorney-General and his present office stands him in good stead to be the one who the delegates would be electing. He has nationwide name recognition too, he observed.

In the Western Region trip, he was assisted by the regional organiser, Mr. Kojo Acquah, who has openly identified with Prof. K. Frimpong-Boateng, one of the presidential aspirants, Mr. K. K. Sam, regional secretary, Kofi Nyonkopa, first Vice chairman and an unidentified lady.

The contentious issue of the UNC, led by his uncle Mr. William Ofori-Atta and the Progress Party (PP) of Professor Kofi Busia also came up, but he explained that he is not of the old school, when the party was split because of sharp differences within the Progress Party leadership.

His reasoning was that when he was confronted with the temptation to do the same thing, when he lost to President Kufuor in 1998, he was the first to take the microphone and congratulate the victorious Kufuor at Sunyani.

The Minister donated ¢2 million cedis to the executives after some of them spoke and reminded him that the party rolls out a welcome mat for every candidate, but the rest is up to the candidates themselves to make their impact felt on the individual delegates.

Some supporters of Hon. Mike Oquaye, however, who discussed Nana Addo’s criteria noted that even Mike Oquaye is younger than Nana Addo, and recalled that Nana Addo has never been a core NPP man because when he was at the University of Ghana, Oquaye championed the UP cause while Nana Addo strongly espoused CPP and Nkrumahist traditions.

But one delegate who spoke to this paper told me that he was not convinced by the campaign message of Nana Akufo Addo. “But you hailed him as the best candidate,” queried this reporter, "Yes, but we did and also sang his praises but this is usual and traditional. You have to do something to let him feel that his travel had not been in vain", he told this reporter.

To him, the delegates know the character of Akufo Addo and prayed that other delegates would scrutinize the character of each aspirant before they would cast their votes, and not to allow finance to be the sole criterion or basis in electing a flagbearer for the party.

To him, though he conceded that the tour of the aspirants was the cocoa season for the delegates to harvest their money, they also consider the interest of the party, by electing a flagbearer who epitomized the character of the sitting president, to lead the party in its journey to victory in 2008, clearly something that is diametrically the opposite of the characteristics of Nana Akufo Addo.