PPP names candidate for Talensi by-election

Ghana’s second largest opposition party, Progressive People’s Party (PPP), on Monday, June 22 selected Joseph Toatoba as its parliamentary candidate for the July 7 by-election in the Talensi Constituency.

Mr Toatoba, 43, is a banker with the Bawku branch of GN Bank, which belongs to party founder Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom.

Mr Toatoba goes into next month’s election to seek the Holy Grail for PPP, which has no representative in Ghana’s Parliament.

He will come up against accountant-cum-lawyer Thomas Doanab of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and retired senior prisons officer BT Baba of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), among other contestants, in the by-election.

Our Upper East Region correspondent reports that Mr Toatoba makes economic empowerment and job creation his priorities.

During his confirmation address on Monday, TV3’s Rabiu Tanko Mohammed reports, the PPP candidate called on constituents to change the voting pattern of Talensi since the NPP and NDC have not lived up to the billing in their occupation of the seat.

The by-election in the constituency was occasioned by the abdication of the seat by Robert Nachinab Mosore, who has ascended the paramountcy of Tongo.