How I became part of Akufo-Addo’s 2016 campaign team at age 26 - Fatimatu Abubakar

The Deputy Minister for Information, Fatimatu Abubakar, has narrated the events that led to her being handpicked to be part of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s campaign team for the 2016 elections.

Speaking on TV3's Today’s Woman programme, Abubakar said that she captured the eyes of some leading figures in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) because of the many works she was doing for the party at the grassroots.

“There was a particular time when I received a call from Madam Sahatu Atta who is a PA to the president and she said they were setting up a fundraising committee and many people were mentioning my name… telling her how good I was at mobilising funds.

“Before I could even hoop on that fundraising committee another call come through that they were looking for campaign aids for the president and that they were looking for younger people because during that time people were saying the president and people around him were old. At that time, I was either 26 or 27 years old,” she said.

The deputy minister said that she was then invited to meet the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at his home in Nima, by Kwamena Bartels, the current Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ghana Oil Company.

In what seems to be an interview, Fatimatu told the president of her ambition of becoming a lawyer and an academic.

“This was the first time I was meeting the president; I was attending every rally but I never imagine that I could meet the president. I felt so small, I wasn’t that confident but I had clarity of purpose. I was certain of what I wanted to be in future.

“So, at our first encounter, I told him I want to be a lawyer but I did not have the means yet, I have done my first degree in psychology and I was making the necessary arrangement to start a second degree in law and then go to the Ghana School of Law. And that I want to do my master's and PhD so that I can teach law,” he narrated.

The president, who was then the presidential candidate of the NPP, she said, encouraged her and promised to call her.

Days after her first encounter with the president, the deputy information minister said that she was not even sure of what the president wanted her to do.

Then she received a call that the president wanted to meet her at Sunyani, where Akufo-Addo was expected to launch his campaign for the 2016 elections.

“We got to Sunyani like everyone less. And then I was there and they were mentioning the campaign team and then they mentioned my name. I was so shocked that I even could not claim the stage to get acknowledged.”

After the launch, she was told that she got the job because so many people recommended her for the work she was doing for the party.

Fatima Abubakar, therefore, encouraged Ghanaians not to be so fixated on making money out of every venture they engage in but to focus on doing voluntary work because there are people watching who could make all their dreams come through.

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