NPP Suspends Nyaho

Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe is the latest suspension victim of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The founding-member of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition was handed a letter, recently, to that effect, by the elephant family’s Greater Accra arm.

Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe confirmed his suspension to Class News' Parker Wilson. "That I have been suspended, indefinitely, that is true. I got a letter to that effect," he told Parker Wilson in an interview on Saturday January 2.

It is not clear what triggered his suspension but Class News' checks within the party revealed that the leadership of the NPP found some of his past comments concerning the party unsavoury and a breach of some provisions of Ghana's biggest opposition party.

Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe becomes the fourth prominent member of the NPP to be suspended, but the first victim in 2016. Three national executives: Chairman Paul Afoko, Second Vice-Chair Sammy Crabbe and General Secretary Kwabena Agyepong were suspended, in turns, late last year for various acts of indiscipline.

In October last year, a former Chairman of the NPP Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey said Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe does not merit the accolade 'leading NPP member', if there were such a title in the party.

"I don't think that Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe will be qualified to be a so-called leading member of the NPP," Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey said.

"I don't think he has acted in the interest of the New Patriotic Party for some time now," Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey explained in an interview with Neat FM.

He said Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe has not shown loyalty to the NPP, "because one of the first things that you have to do [as a party member] is to uphold your party; I don’t think Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe has done anything to uphold the NPP or the NPP’s positions or policy."

"I think he feels that he's an individual. and, therefore, he can operate as an individual. If he wishes to operate as an individual, then he should operate as an individual without a cloak as being a member of the party.

"I have felt this way for a long time; it's not something recent. I don’t think he has been supportive of the party, in fact from before 2012," he said in response to a question about whether his reaction was informed by Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe's lampooning – at the time – of the party's flagbearer's 'Rise and Build' tour across the country.

Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe criticised the tour as needless. He told Neat FM's morning show 'GhanaMonTie' earlier that month that: "Rise and build tour is not what will get the party united."

"If you start such a tour without principal players in the NPP then where are you heading towards?" he asked.

"What my party needs at the moment is a very strong, united front and not Rise and Build whatever tour! A united front is key to success! If we're not united, we should forget 2016, and truly, we're not united! Anyone who will tell you the party is united is not telling you the truth," Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe said.

Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey said a person like Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe, who did not help the NPP's 2012 campaign in any way, cannot consider himself a member of the party, and has suggested that he be hauled before the party's disciplinary committee and given the same treatment as fellow founder-member Dr Charles Wereko-Brobbey, who was suspended for two years after he publicly criticised some actions of the party in the past.