WITH BARELY three months for the nation to go to the polls, the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), continues to reel under a spate of defections of its members to the ruling NPP. The latest was in the Ayawaso East constituency in Accra. Addressing a press conference at the weekend to announce their movement from the NDC to the NPP, a spokesman for the group of defectors, Mohammed Sofo Jajah, a former assembly member of Maamobi West electoral area, said their decision was as a result of ?the tremendous performance of the NPP within the few years in power?.
Dismissing assertion that they were joining the governing party for their stomachs? sake, Alhaji Jajah, said he had no ill feelings towards his former party.
?I have no ill-feelings towards the NDC. However, my conscience tells me that this is the appropriate time for me to support the NPP,? he said in a prepared statement read on their behalf.
Jajah, who was a former campaign manager of the former NDC Member of Parliament for the area, Dr. Farouk Braimah and steering committee chairman of the party from 1996 to 1998, compared the achievements of the NDC in its eight years in office and those of the NPP since 2001.
?First of all, when I look at the performance of both parties, I realize that the NPP, within its very short time, has performed far better than the eight years the NDC ruled. In terms of infrastructure development, rule of law, good governance, poverty eradication, just to mention a few, the NDC cannot match the NPP in any sense of the word,? he said.
Jajah, a cadre of the erstwhile CDR under the PNDC, who joined the NDC in 1992, said to him as a politician and an opinion leader, development must be human-centred.
?The human resources of the nation must be the priority and if we have a government or political party that is pursuing this agenda then common sense will dictate that I give my full support to that political party.? He said he had been in the NPP since 2001 but was now making his intension public to stem the rumours being spread about him.
The constituency propaganda and publicity chairman of the NPP, Ex-Inspector Mohammed Alidu noted that with the defections that had rocked the NDC so far, the NPP was on its way to victory in the forthcoming elections.
He accused the NDC of discarding its cadres after using them to win power, saying with the current wind of defection blowing, the party?s ?world banks will be turned into rural banks?.
Alidu, himself a former CDR cadre said most of the cadres were virtually poor adding that a political party is not a religion that one needs to owe allegiance to.
?It is religion that one owes allegiance to. One does not owe allegiance to a political party. One only owes allegiance to God alone,? he said.
