National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Samuel Ofosu Ampofo has waded into the ethnic banter ongoing between leader of his party and that of the New Patriotic Party (NDC).
The exchanges followed a Facebook post by John Dramani Mahama after he shared an article written by Member of Parliament of Bolgatanga Central Constituency Isaac Adongo.
Former President Mahama had annotated the article with the expression “Akyem Sakawa Boys”, much to the provocation of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Meeting members of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference last Friday, the president wondered why the clergy and senior citizens have not called the former president to order.
“What can be the basis for such a remark? If it’s a public act that you have a problem with, fair enough but that the people who are doing it are given this ethnic branding, that cannot be right,” he told members of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference who called on him at the Jubilee House on Friday.
“That’s the kind of language that we don’t want in our politics. So I am 100 per cent on the same wavelength as you as to the kind of politics that will make sense in our [country].”
But Mr Mahama has since justified his post, saying the president doesn’t have the right to call him to order given his past similar pronouncements.
“I think that temperament in leadership is very important and there are many things a President should attend to and you must not appear in public to have lost your cool,” he said in an interview over the weekend.
The NDC flagbearer said he cannot be said to hate Akyems as his party’s National Chairman, Mr Ampofo, and even the Chairman of the Manifesto Committee, Professor Kwaku Danso Boafo, are all Akyems helping in his campaign to return to power.
Indeed, speaking at the manifesto launch of the biggest opposition party at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Chairman Ofosu Ampofo said he and Prof Danso Boafo are proper Akyems.
“When the Manifesto Committee under the chairmanship of my own compatriot, mind you, we don’t belong to any mafia group.
“We are Akyem people. We don’t want any trouble.”
