A senior citizen and founding member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Nyaho Nyaho- Tamakloe, has described the recent comments made by Agriculture Minister Bryan Acheampong while addressing party supporters after a health march at Mpraeso in the Eastern Region, as “unfortunate and in bad taste.”
The Minister, addressing party supporters on Saturday, 8 March 2023, said should the National Democratic Congress (NDC) dare to use “threats, violence and foolishness in the 2024 election, we [the New Patriotic Party] will let them know we have the men,” stressing: “We will show them that we have the men. We have the men.”
Mr Acheampong, who is also the former Minister of State in charge of National Security and the MP for Abetifi noted the: “NDC party will collapse.”
According to him, the NPP will never hand over power to the NDC after the 2024 polls, adding that the incumbent party will do everything at all costs to hold on to power.
“It will never happen that we the NPP will stand on a platform to hand over power to the NDC.”
“It will never happen! We will make sure NPP remains in government at all costs,” he declared.
In his view, the government is fixing the economy, which will inure the NPP’s electoral fortunes.
“Now with the way things are changing, the economy will bounce back again, I am telling you that we are going to come around that curve and we are going to win the 2024 elections hands down,” he said.
But reacting to the comments in a statement issued on Monday, 10 April 2023, Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe assured the Agriculture Minister that they will not sit and watch him ruin the country’s democracy.
“Some of us will not sit down unperturbed as he seeks to press the destructive button of the 4th Republic. And we are resolved in our determination,” he said.
Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe indicated that: “Since the removal of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president in 1966, this nation has never known peace politically and economically. We have had a series of coup d’état.
“The political class comes in for a period and the military takes over. A situation which has retarded our development rather than help it. This has gone on since 1966 until finally through the blood and sweat of gallant soldiers and civilians alike, we had a constitutional rule in 1992.”
The founding member of the NPP further questioned the Agriculture Minister’s chains of properties.
“Mr Bryan Acheampong with all the properties he has acquired from the Kwahu range to the Akuapem range are known. The question is, can he honestly account for these numerous properties with independent enquiry?”
He stressed that: “Bryan Acheampong’s indiscipline and violent tendency has reached legendary levels and it is about time the President and the NPP leadership called him to sanity. Failure to do that will further injure the party and lead it to a total collapse.”
Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe further stressed that: “Some of us in the NPP will not sit down unconcerned for such irresponsible behaviours alien to the NPP and inimical to national development to continue.
“Development is what our country greatly requires now, and as a cabinet minister that is what Bryan Acheampong should address on political platforms such as it was offered to him last Saturday.
He, therefore, advised the Minister to “as a matter of urgency, withdraw and render an unqualified apology to the good people of Ghana for making a such destructive, unlawful, unguided, unnecessary and unintelligent political statement.”
“Our time is for sound argument on bread-and-butter issues, not hooliganism,” he added.
