Three aspirants file to contest in NPP Ningo-Prampram parliamentary primaries

Three parliamentary aspirants will contest the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) parliamentary primaries on December 2, 2023, seeking to be the face of the party for Ningo-Prampram Constituency for the 2024 general election.

The three are: the two-term constituency chairman, Michael Tetteh Eku, who is also the Ningo-Prampram District Director of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO); John Mantse Akwetey, the Public Relations Officer at the Ghana TVET Service; and Mrs. Patricia Narko Kumoji-Nartey, a Consultant and Paralegal.

Eku, in a declaration of intent to contest the parliamentary seat ahead of filing his nomination, stated that he was contesting after consultations with constituents and calls received for him to lead the party in 2024.

He indicated that his goal was to change the fortunes of the constituency in the 2024 general elections.

Akwetey, on his part, has put in place a seven-point agenda spanning youth employment, the empowerment of electoral area coordinators, and polling station executives, among others, to put the party in a better position to win.

Kumoji-Nartey, the only woman contesting the constituency primaries, told the Ghana News Agency that she was the right person to end the 30-year drought for the NPP in the Ningo-Prampram Constituency, as women possessed special leadership qualities.

The Ningo-Prampram constituency, which is made up of two traditional areas, Prampram and Ningo, has since the inception of the fourth republic been a stronghold of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), with the NPP yet to win a seat.

The seat was held by the late Mr. Enoch Teye Mensah until 2015, when the current MP, Samuel Nartey George, dethroned him in a fierce contest.

George retained the seat for the NDC with 23,860, representing 63.00 percent of the total votes cast over Mr. Sylvester Tetteh of the NPP, who polled 13,588, representing 35.88 percent.

In the 2020 elections, Mr. George took it a notch higher by winning 70.96 percent (48,661) of the votes cast compared to his NPP contender, Mr. Alexander Leonel Martey, who received 29.04 percent (19,911), showing a difference of 28,750 votes.

The Ningo-Prampram constituency, which used to be mostly habited by indigenous Dangme people from Ningo and Prampram, as the GNA observed, has gradually turned into a cosmopolitan area as it plays host to several numbers of estates and other communities.

With such developments, some of these residents have now registered to vote in the constituency come 2024, and that could determine whether one of the three parliamentary candidate’s hopefuls for the NPP would eventually change the constituency status as an orphan or reinforce it.