On Saturday October 18, Ghana’s main opposition party, the New Patriotic Party voted Nana Akuffo-Addo as the presidential candidate for the 2016 elections. Akuffo-Addo won 94.35 percent of the votes cast whilst his main opponent Alan K. Kyeremanten got a meagre 4.75 percent.
The third candidate, Francis Addai Nimoh received 0.91 percent of the votes.
This will be the third time that Akuffo-Addo will be the flagbearer for the NPP in Ghana’s general elections. In an interview with Sahara Reporters at the party’s headquarters in Accra, Nana Ohene Ntow, the spokesperson for Kyeremanten said that he would support Akuffo-Addo even if Kyeremanten loses.
“This is not the first time we are having the primaries. This will not be the first time Nana will win, and Alan will not have been elected,” Ohene Ntow said. “At any time we have elected one candidate in the primaries that has been Nana, the party has been together, the party has rallied behind him. We all did,” he added.
Akuffo Addo has been the party favourite since the Special Delegates Congress, which held in August to bring down the potential flagbearers from seven to three.
“[Nana] will provide visionary leadership. It’s been noted that he has not been corrupted for all the years that he has been in public life. You can’t tell him that he is corrupt. This is the kind of leader we need,” a party activist said. “He has plans and programs that will frog leap our country to move our country from its abysmal state to a middle-income country,”he added.
Prior to the elections, it had been rumored that a rejection of Kyeremanten as flagbearer would be an in-house coup against former President Kuffour who is alleged to be Kyeremanten’s godfather. When asked his thoughts on this, Ohene Ntow said that if that exists, then the part is doing itself a huge disservice.
A total of 141,000 delegates in 275 constituencies voted in the primaries. These included diaspora voters from party groups around the world.
“We, in the NPP, have a sacred, two-fold duty. We must rid our country, through the peace of the ballot box, of this incompetent NDC government of John Dramani Mahama,” Akuffo-Addo said as he addressed party supporters at the Efua Sutherland Children’s park in Accra. “[We must] relieve the Ghanaian people of the unjustifiable hardships and difficulties they are encountering” he added.
When asked to speak on Akuffo-Addo’s chance at winning the national elections in 2016, a party activist said, “Nana’s chance to win the next elections is far better because the whole party is now committed to him.”
“It’s up to Ghanaians to decide that they need to shift from the abysmal level we are sinking to and provide Nana Addo with the necessary support to give him the chance to show what he can do. The whole party is behind Nana Addo,” he said.