Atik was inefficient – Wilson

Director of Communications of the Peoples National Congress (PNC), Emmanuel Wilson has justified the recent suspension of the party’s General Secretary, Atik Mohammed. According to him, Mohammed was deserving of the suspension as he was ineffective in his position as General Secretary.

“He was not working efficiently as the General Secretary, as the head of administration, the administration of the party is virtually non-existing and so the national executive in their wisdom realized that they cannot keep him on as a general secretary between now and the congress”.

Speaking to Joynews, Mr. Wilson accused Atik of being a major contributing factor to the party’s disqualification from the polls in 2016. He indicated that rather than focusing on his duties which were very essential to the party particularly around the election period, he rather was focusing on other trivial issues.

“One thing that quickly came up as an argument against him in relation to the 2016 election, had to do with our disqualification as a political party. All of us will attest to it that the head of administration is the General Secretary. Filling of Presidential nomination forms must be directly supervised by the General Secretary.

In the afternoon of Thursday when we were all busy and moving up and down, the General Secretary was sitting down comfortably on Asempa FM and was just doing a newspaper review. The argument came clear that he did not know his priorities”.

He said the executives took the decision at this time because it was essential to the party’s progress moving forward.

“It is more urgent than ever because we do not have enough time as a political party called the PNC. There are so many things that we need to do, indeed unlike the NPP and the NDC who have strong structures compared to that of the PNC, we still have a lot of work to do between now and 2020”.

The People's National Convention last week, suspended the General Secretary Atik Mohammed, for gross "misbehavior and misconduct". Mr. Wilson confirmed that the decision was taken at the party's extraordinary National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting held Saturday.

The seven-hour-long meeting was reportedly chaired by PNC National Chairman Bernard Mornah and attended by all the party's National Executives and regional representatives; PNC's 2016 Flagbearer, Dr Edward Mahama, 2016 Vice Presidential Candidate, Emmanuel Anyidoho, first Vice Chairman, Dr Woembegu, second Vice Chairman, Henry Asante and third Vice Chairman, Hajia Ajara.

Bernard Mornah however has condemned the suspension of Atik Mohammed, describing it as “injustice”.

Expressing dissappointment at the decision to indefinitely suspend Mr. Mohammed, he said the action was one which ‘was cooked in the bedroom’.

“… I told them that nobody should be held responsible for the defeat of the PNC in the elections. All responsibility should be on my chest as chairman,” he noted.

He further added that “after leaving the meeting, rather than putting the blame on me you go and suspend the general secretary… So it’s like this thing was cooked from the bedroom and brought to the headquarters.”