Spreading Yourself Too Thin Will Spell Your Doom: An Open Letter To Chairman Stephen Ayensu Ntim

Dear Chairman Ntim,

Allow me to first take the opportunity, like many a member of the elephant family and Ghanaian, to welcome you as the newly-elected Chairman of the oldest of the two dominant political groupings in our country’s political firmament after two decades of jockeying for this coveted position.

Even though you ascend the throne at the worst of times in terms of the fortunes of our dear party (NPP) and country, knowing you as a competent and passionate person when it comes to party and country, I have no doubt at all that you will assail the challenges that await you and your team.

Because of the economic, social and political challenges that have been confronting Ghanaians in the last few years, the challenges that confront you as the national Chairman of our party have been defined variously by different people depending upon where they stand on the ever-widening political divide in the country.

For the bulk of the membership of the UP tradition, the problems that await you as you settle down to work for the party are two-fold, namely, to help the party “break the eight” that has become the mantra of the party, and to pull the party back from the brink in terms of its organisation.

As a party Chairman, it is natural for the party membership to expect that you and your team would be duty bound to embrace these two job descriptions. Ideally, this expectation would not be too far-fetched because the raison d’etre of any political party is to organize the party efficiently and effectively to win political power ultimately.

Timing, they say, is everything Chairman. It is needless to say that the first problem, i.e. preparing the party to break the so-called “eight” within the remaining time frame, is the arduous of the two tasks that face you in the immediate aftermath of your election as Chairman. Why am I saying this?

Even though naturally political parties are predisposed to wanting to win political power, I doubt that many of my fellow party members have really thought about what it entails to break the eight in the face of the immense economic and social malaise in the country.

Without a doubt, Ghanaians are exasperated by the hardships they are experiencing presently and are only waiting to change course in terms of governance even though personally I do not think that the NDC is the best alternative given this party’s own governance track record in recent years.

For one thing, the two tasks that confront you in the immediate future are not mutually exclusive, because ‘breaking the eight’ in less than three years also entails a very vigorous re-organisation of the party to bring it back from the brink of disintegration.

Chairman, truth be told, the hallmark of the NPP since 2016 has been the politics of exclusivity and the dismantling of the broad coalition that JA Kufuor built to win power for the party after more than 30 years in the political wilderness in 2000.

The ultimate price the party paid for this leadership-inspired factionalist tendency was the trouncing of the party in the 2020 parliamentary elections where we lost our majority in the house and the near miss of the presidency.

The natural extension of this factionalist tendency in the party is a situation where the bulk of the membership has been excluded from state power with the party in power in favour of a very small coterie of relatives and loyal friends of those who control the party now.

Expectedly, this politics of exclusion within the party was emphatically repudiated by the grassroots at the recent party congress at the Accra sports stadium when the likes of you were given the nod, while errand boys of exclusion like John Boadu were rejected.

The party has now become an object of derision by our detractors who are now mocking us that our conventional “we have the men” line is without substance given the apparent misrule that has plunged the country into a deep economic and moral abyss.

But, everybody knows that we do indeed have the men and the women but many have been deliberately side lined as victims of the factionalism within the party. There are very fine and competent technocrats and intellectuals in the party who could have helped nip the current crises in the bud but they were ignored or marginalized to massage some big egos.

Chairman, beside the task of wooing those who feel excluded or marginalized back into the fold, there is an obvious need of revamping the battered economy and society if there is to be any meaningful path to breaking the eight in less than three years.

In terms of our party’s Constitution, the Chairman and the General Secretary of the party sit in Cabinet. However, we should not kid ourselves about the leverage you in particular will wield in the present cabinet given that you are not a blue-eyed “boy” of the powers that be in the party now.

Every staunch UP traditionalist knows that your dream of chairing our party over the years has been scuttled by the machinations of those who control the party now. So, the question becomes, what are the chances of influencing decisions in the cabinet now? I can only conjecture the answer to this question.

Thus, the pertinent question at this juncture is: Is it realistic to expend time and resources on achieving this seemingly impossible goal under the present circumstances? Personally, my take is that chasing the goal of breaking the eight would be the proverbial Achilles heel and is likely to be your Waterloo with regard to your legacy.

I am saying this because I foresee two potential problems here. First, the magnitude of the economic and social problems that has been created under the present administration do not lend themselves to any meaningful solutions within the timeframe even with the best of our party’s brains.

This is the reason why personally, I see the call for a cabinet reshuffle as a wild goose chase because no amount of reshuffle at this “late” stage will amount to anything that will convince the Ghanaian electorate to change their attitude toward the NPP; we have simply failed to govern to their expectations.

Chairman, please don’t get me wrong. As you may know, I am a founding member of the party and I worked briefly for the party in government under JA Kufuor. So, like every diehard member of the elephant family, I wish the party well and would want it to break the eight. However, a spade must be called a spade, our path is very narrow!

So, what do you do in the face of competing demands vis a vis limited resources in terms of time and energy? Much as many of us are happy about your elevation to the chairmanship, I do not envy you at all because the tasks facing you are daunting.

This means you need to make a judicious selection of the tasks you can realistically seek to attain. To reiterate, political parties exist for the sake of winning political power, however, the means to this end is a well-organized party machinery in terms of unity, effectiveness and efficiency.

There is very little doubt about the fact that our party has been fractured in the last few years and therefore the task of re-building the party to bring it back to the status quo ante bellum trumps all other concerns.

Many party members have joined the various opposition groupings, while others who remained have either been “suspended” or have become unconcerned about matters pertaining to the welfare of the party. This is not how any political party goes into battle to break the eight or win an election.

In conclusion, therefore, my personal advice is that trying to break the eight and simultaneously re-building our battered party will be spreading yourself too thin to enable you leave any meaningful legacy at the end of your tenure.

Personally, I would jettison the goal of breaking the eight and grab the opportunity to grab the party back from the jaws of the pirates for us to re-group and prepare the party for future battles.

To do seek to attain the two goals will make you “a jugular who throws too many balls into the air and does not know which one to catch”.

My very best wishes to you again and your team.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Acheampong Yaw Amoateng, PhD.

(Professor Emeritus of Sociology, USA).