Hon.Francis Addai-Niomh,the former Member of Parliament(MP) for Mampong constituency in the Ashanti region who doubles as 2024 NPP flagbearer hopeful has predicted that his Party’s determination of breaking the 8 years jinx comes 2024 general election is possible. He was however, quick to explain that the party needs to satisfy some critical conditions to make breaking the 8 easy and possible.
Hon.Francis Addai-Nimoh who came third in the 2014 NPP flagbearership contest said this on The Couch show on Pan Africa TV with Ama Pratt.
According to him, to break the 8, NPP needs to satisfy three conditions in his opinion. Firstly, he said there is the need to ensure internal cohesion.
He therefore tasked the newly elected national executives led by Mr.Stephen Ntim to set themselves a target to address all problems associated with the internal elections from the polling station level to recently held National executives elections before the end of the year,2022.
The second condition he mentioned is the government’s performance. According to him, NPP still has more than 2 and half years to deliver to expectation of Ghanaians.
He therefore encouraged Nana Addo led government to help reduce the current economic hardship. According to hon.Addai-Nimoh,despite the current economic hardships, NPP can still turn things around for the betterment of the nation.
“I must admit that it is not easy for breaking the 8 hence there is the need for our government to work extra-hard to help ensure the confidence Ghanaians have in NPP”,he stressed.
On the third condition NPP needs to satisfy in order to break the 8, Hon.Francis Addai-Nimoh said NPP needs a new face with unblemished character.
The 2024 NPP flagbearer hopeful who is also a former head of Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Roads & Highways during former President John Agyekum Kufour’s era said the following characteristics should also be considered by the delegates of the party in selecting the new face to lead the party; the candidate must be a person who is outside or not part of the current administration or government, a strong unifier to unify the perceived blocks in the Party(NPP) and above all the new face or candidate must be an unblemished character.
Hon.Addai-Nimoh said the new face or person must also come out with a new language or message to comfort Ghanaians or to gives Ghanaians new hope ahead of 2024 polls.
The new face to lead NPP should also have a mature age advantage in the “unlikely event that NPP is not successful in 2024 and can be given another opportunity in subsequent election”.
Addai-Nimoh who sees himself as the best person to lead NPP to break the 8 further argued that apart from former President Rawlings, successive presidents from ex-President J.A.Kufour to Nana Addo all had social sciences background and it was now time for a person with Engineering background to lead the nation.He cited China among other developed countries whose leaders are from Engineering background.
“I think it is now time to give opportunity to Engineers to also lead the country’s transformation agenda”.
Hon.Addai-Nimoh,an engineer by profession said by 2024 general elections first time voters is expected to be more than 1million hence NPP needs a new face to give them and old voters hope to avoid apathy.
He also shoots down the school of taught that there is a real tradition to follow in NPP (Busia,Dankwah and Dobo) and other school of taught that the party has a queue for the flagbearer hopefuls and that it was time for someone to lead after Nana Addo!
On what he would do differently from successive and current government when given opportunity as NPP flagbearer and subsequently new President of Ghana, he said “If I’m offered the opportunity, all abandoned government funded projects will be completed. If it will take me a whole of my first term to complete all the abandoned projects from former President J.J.Rawlings to Nana Addo administration I will do it for the benefit of the Ghanaian people”.
Hon.Francis Addai-Nimoh also seized the opportunity to commend the forebears of party and the current leadership as they celebrate 30th anniversary of the formation of NPP.
He therefore advised the rank and file of NPP to help guide their principles and promote the good policies and programs of party and the government to attract more members or followers.
Adding that come 2024 they (NPP) have opportunity to set a new record by breaking the 8 to help them bring the needed development for Ghanaians.Story by a political desk report
Hon.Francis Addai-Nimoh
