NPP Intends to Retain Power in 2024 and Even Beyond.

Information Minister, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, believes that the New Patriotic Party can actually be the first political party to break the eight-year reign cycle which is a prevalent cycle for political parties to go for only eight (8) years of consistently being in power, through the implementation of policies and the strengthening of the economy and has since stated the NPP's strategic intention to work hard for it.

This was in response to a question today, on how he responds news items, that mentions political prediction by an opinion polling agency, known as the Economic Intelligence Unit that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) may well win the 2024 elections. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah stated that, the Nana Addo's government’s has a stance on all such opinion polls and surveys, and their stand is hat, their work only serves as a guiding documents rather.

“I am one of the people who believe that words matter but in what I have read, I have not seen the Economic Intelligent Unit predict victory for the NDC in 2024. This administration has a position on all these surveys, opinion polls, risk assessments, predictive analysis and our position is that they are guiding notes; nothing more, and we consider them and use them to inform the work that we do,” he said.

He was emphatic however that, been conscious of a possibility of the usual eight year mandate and change afterwards, the current government is committed to going the extra mile to work harder, to ensuring that through their work and influence, they can maintain the goodwill they have in the public, earning them another four-year mandate from Ghanaians.

“We are very much aware of this tendency but we believe that this whole thing of every eight years, even when the country is making progress, power changes hands, it’s something that actually set us back and that is why this administration intends to work very hard to retain the confidence of the people by the time that the mandate of our second term is done so that we can break the eight year cycle. It would ordinarily be a risk but this government is going to break this through the reengineering of a recovery of the economy from where it is now, getting back on growth, expansion, jobs, incomes, and the transformation agenda,” he had said.

All these come on the back of calls and counsel years back, from the stalwart politician and former President of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufuor who in mid 2018, had called on NPP members to strife for unity and support the vision of President Akufo-Addo to ensure that the party stays in power for eternity, as according to the then former president, the NPP can win tall subsequent elections, depending on the NPP party members unrelenting fight against these two political evils, acrimony and internal bickering.

The former president who ruled Ghana for two terms, having snatched power from the NDC, between 2000 and 2008 was then delivering a speech at the Koforidua Technical University during the NPP party’s general delegates conference had then said “Let us not do anything that will begin to splinter us. If we can overcome this and hold together, I assure you that the people of Ghana will vote for us 2020, vote for us 2024, vote us 2028 and into eternity and we will definately become the party of the nation. I believe in this sincerely and this is what I’ve come to tell you.” he had said, to the cheers of the hundreds of party delegates present.

The former president had added that “I have come to remind you that we are only one and half years into power. Unfortunately for us, the tenure of office of our government is too short, it is only four years. You don’t change the world within four years but we want to change the world, we want to transform Ghana and to be able to do this we need a very solid and united party as the undercarriage for the great vision and great policies the government is launching to be given the change of the day, to win election over and over again at the national level so that these visions could be realized for the people of Ghana as a whole. And to do this I’ve just come to you to please swallow your pride…for this, we must swallow our individual egos and with all due respect vanity for the greater good of our country and humanity at large,” he added.

The former President John Agyekum Kufuor had reminded them that “It has taken quite a long time for us to come into government in 2016 then. And now that we have it and there is so much to do, unfortunately the term of office is so short, we must keep on winning perhaps three, four five times, before the roots will go deep and we become the party of the nation,” he had said.

For this to be possible, Kufuor said “The back room people don’t tend to be too good on platforms, that’s the profession of politicians like us but invariably behind us we’ve got the backroom people working for us. It’s the same in government. So the party headquarters must be equipped with such full timers. They must be paid well and their role is just to sit and think and strategize for us. They will be strengthening the party’s future. We talk of sustainability these days and I think the way to get to it is to get so professional in the back room, and we should never forget that in current times we are in the era of technocracy; the digital age. You may be a democrat alright but if you do not know the dynamics of the time, you talk democracy and at the end of the day your economy might be faltering, you may not be able to do the necessary social interventions to ensure equality of opportunity that is also part of our DNA. So my prayer is that when the party retires into detailed deliberations the party will see how we will balance democracy with technocracy,” he added.

Then aspiring National Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party, Freddie Blay, had also added that, the NPP party must hope to stay in power for the next 60 years.

Whereas the party's performance in the just ended elections, was not impressive as the one in 2016, critics have therefore lowered their expectations of a win in 2024 and however assessed that, the performance of the party now in this second and last term of Nana Addo and also, some changes in its regional and national officers may turn around their fortunes though.

As a result, rumours have been flying of Sammy Awuku's interest in the position of General Secretary of the party, with the view to leading directly, the involvement of the youth to make this social media campaign of "breaking the Eight" a possibility, alongside many other potential aspirants.

Also the past history of 17 individual presidential aspirants of the party, which many believed, helped occasion the NPP's lose in the general elections, as it created factions in the party may well be rearing its ugly face already, making the breaking the eight, an impossibility. As already, names such as Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Mr. Joe Ghartey, have already popped up as part of the increasing list of persons, interested in leading the party in 2024, aside the Bawumia and Alan Kyeremanteng candidature.