NPP presidential primary: I’ll vote for aspirant who can defeat John Mahama – Akufo-Addo declares

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said that his vote in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential primary will go to the aspirant who can best unite the party and win the presidential election of December 7, 2024.

“I have just one vote, the same as any polling station executive anywhere in the country, and I will cast that vote for an aspirant who, I believe, can best unite the Party, and, above all, who can win the presidential election of 7th December 2024, and inflict a third successive defeat on the perennial NDC Presidential Candidate, John Dramani Mahama,” he stated.

The President made this known when he met with communicators of the party at the Jubilee House on Wednesday, August 2, 2023.

No President can foist a candidate
The President emphasized that he cannot foist any candidate on the party. He stated: “The history of the NPP tells us that no President can foist a candidate on the Party against its wishes. The NPP is not that kind of Party.

We have never subscribed to a cult of personality. Indeed, our highly-respected former President, the 1st NPP President, His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor, in the aftermath of my election as NPP Presidential Candidate, by the 2007 National Congress, told the Congress that ‘the Party has its spirit’, a spirit that cannot be ignored.”

Conduct
In response to an appeal by the NPP Director of Communications, Richard Ahiagbah, in relation to the party’s conduct in next year’s election, President Akufo-Addo stated that the party cannot afford to allow what happened to it in 2008 to reoccur in 2024.

“We are all witnesses to the derailing of the achievements chalked by President John Agyekum Kufuor by the successor NDC Government, from 2009 to 2017, in which John Dramani Mahama featured so prominently,” the President noted.

According to him “under 8-years of the successor NDC Government, we became famous for all the wrong reasons. Four successive years of dumsor, the mismanagement of the economy, wrong and dangerous energy contracts, and wanton corruption dissipated any hope the Ghanaian had for sustained economic development. Never again should we allow this to happen.”

With the start of the final leg of internal contests of the NPP, President Akufo-Addo noted that some actions by a few members of the party are making the front pages for the wrong reasons.

“We are expending some of our energies hurling invectives at each other, instead of at our opponents, and, in the process, taking digs at our own Government. It has been an anxious time for all who love our party, and who see us as the party that can bring progress and prosperity to our nation,” he said.