By:Kofi Owusu

A wave of excitement has swept through New Patriotic Party circles in the Ashanti Region this week as one of the party’s most decorated, Hon. Dr. Henry Kwabena Kokofu, former Member of Parliament for Bantama and erstwhile Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), declared his intention for NPP Chairmanship post

Though, he was yet to formally make the bid public as at the time of filing the story. However, news of his coming made the airwaves this week with flyers on social media, and many supporters cannot wait to embrace his ambition.

Long anticipated by grassroots faithful who had been quietly rallying behind his name for months, Hon. Kokofu’s emergence appears to have electrified a region that knows it must fight back from the shock of the 2024 general election defeat.

For those who know Kokofu’s story, particularly in the Ashanti Region NPP, this is a man more than qualified to handle the region at this point in time because of his experience in political leadership; a Polling Station Chairman in his native Bantama, then Electoral Area Coordinator for North Suntreso, then a two-term Constituency Chairman of Bantama, and a Member of Parliament, in one of the NPP’s most prized constituencies.

He has served on the Ashanti Regional Finance Committee, the Reconciliation Committee, and the Elections Committee.

For over two decades, he has been on the national and regional communication teams.

He has, in the truest sense, passed through every mill the NPP has to offer.

Beyond the party trenches, Kokofu has demonstrated that he can operate at the highest levels of public administration.

His appointment as Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency placed him at the helm of one of Ghana’s most critical regulatory bodies, where he earned a reputation for firmness and technocratic credibility.

His governance footprint is broad. He has sat on the boards of the Forestry Commission, the Lands Commission, the Petroleum Commission, the Ghana Maritime Authority, and the National Development Planning Commission, among others.

He also served as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Integrated Iron and Steel Development Corporation (GIISDEC) before his EPA appointment.

He holds a Master of Science degree in Agroforestry from KNUST and a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Ghana School of Law, intellectual credentials that complement, rather than overshadow, his identity as a man of the people.

In the Ashanti Region’s political culture, where grassroots loyalty is the ultimate currency, Kokofu’s academic and professional accomplishments come packaged with an unimpeachable record of having served from the bottom up.

Kokofu has been refreshingly candid about the political landscape he is stepping into. He does not pretend the Ashanti Region is in rude political health.

The NPP’s defeat in the December 2024 general election left deep scars not just in the national tallies but in the spirit of the party’s grassroots machinery.

In Ashanti, historically, the NPP’s fortress and the region where the party’s margins have always been widest, the loss has generated a particular type of wound: apathy. Supporters who once thronged polling stations and drove campaign vehicles into dawn have retreated into silence.
Hon. Kokofu wants to rekindle that fire amongst supporters and sympathisers in the region.

The Three Core Values

Hon. Kokofu’s chairmanship bid is also premised on three interlocking commitments.

The first is loyalty and protection of the flagbearer Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, a man Kokofu, has publicly backed and championed.

He sees himself not merely as a regional administrator but as a critical shield for Bawumia’s national ambitions, pledging to make the Ashanti Region the strongest and most organised front in the party’s 2028 electoral march.

The second commitment is to legacy. For Kokofu, the NPP is not merely a political vehicle. It is a tradition.
He speaks with reverence of the party’s two presidential legacies in power:

Former President J.A. Kufuor, under whose administration Ghana’s democracy deepened and economic growth accelerated, and former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, whose two terms yielded transformative flagship program Kokofu believes these legacies are worth protecting, promoting, and building upon.

The third commitment is to the grassroots, and this is where Kokofu believes he is without peer among the field.

Having walked the length and breadth of constituencies in the Ashanti Region over more than two decades of active party service, he understands what motivates a branch chairman at 5am on polling day, what frustrates a polling agent who feels overlooked by party structures, and what transforms a passive supporter into an active mobiliser.

Grassroots endorsement

The public mood around Kokofu’s candidacy is already generating traction.

Grassroots and identifiable groups within the NPP formally appealed to Dr. Bawumia in February 2026 to prevail upon Kokofu to contest the Ashanti Regional chairmanship, citing his track record and deep relationships within the party.

Fred Appiah, convener of the Grassroots and Identifiable Groups of the NPP, stated that the party needed precisely the kind of unifying, courageous leader that Kokofu represents, someone capable of positioning the region decisively for a 2028 comeback.
That endorsement appeal, coming organically from the base rather than orchestrated from the top, is itself a signal.

In a region where political allegiance runs deep and party members are exceptionally discerning, unsolicited grassroots backing of this nature carries enormous weight.

The Task Ahead Requires Unity

Let there be no illusion about the scale of the task. The Ashanti Region’s NPP structures need more than a change of faces they need rebuilding from the foundations.

The apathy that has set in the following 2024 is real. Mobilising supporters who feel abandoned, healing wounds from internal divisions, and restoring the efficiency of the party’s electoral machinery are not six-month projects.

Hon. Kokofu will not romanticise the challenge. He has stared at it, named it plainly, and declared himself ready to confront it.

He believes that with unity and commitment, which are his trumpcard, he will win the Ashanti votes for Dr. Bawumia and the NPP.