Kennedy Agyapong Has Reaped Humongous Benefits from NPP

The Assin-Central New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament has not minced words when the topic of discussion has had to do with reaping lucrative returns from any considerable financial contributions and/or investments that Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong has made towards the founding, growth and development of the currently ruling party. He has said time and again that he is a hard-nosed businessman who is not lamely given to making charitable contributions to the party without strictly or studiously looking forward to being awarded handsome government contracts in return. So, it is clearly well beside the point for this party presidential candidacy aspirant for the watershed 2024 General Election to be intemperately bragging on the campaign trail about having heavily invested in the fortunes of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), nearly more than any of the other major 2024 party presidential aspirants (See “Oppong Bio Confirms Kennedy Agyapong’s $ 3 Million Loan for NPP Campaign” Ghanaweb.com 5/1/23).

At any rate, if he really wanted a credible party stalwart to back up his quite plausible claim of having picked up the quite considerable debt tab of $ 3 million (USD) for the then main opposition New Patriotic Party in the wake of both the 1992 and the 1996 General Elections, the most reliable witness for the proprietor of the Oman Communications Network to have called upon should have been Mr. Frederick “Fred” Oware, the current Chief-of-Staff of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, and not Mr. William Oppong Bio, who is described by the media as a longtime business partner of Mr. Agyapong. More so because Mr. Oware is reported to have been the Managing-Director of Cal Bank, where the NPP’s debt-scrapping or debt-liquidating loan had allegedly been contracted. Of course, we all know why the stentorian self-glorifying Mr. Agyapong decided not to draw Mr. Oware into the bargain, as it were.

You see, the drawback here is that having his longtime business partner vouch for him is akin to the Assin-Central MP’s testifying as a lone witness in his own defense. Which, of course, is not to necessarily argue against the credibility of the plaintiff’s testimony. Even more significant would be the party’s own record books. It also goes without saying that Mr. Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, the Press Secretary to former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor, is fully and perfectly within his rights to question the veracity of this electioneering-campaign vaunt of the Assin-Central MP, without being dismissively disparaged as being too young at the time to have become privy to or fully appreciated some of the internal dealings of party stalwarts.

For starters, the former General-Secretary of the New Patriotic Party is not significantly younger than Mr. Kennedy Agyapong, who is himself only a couple of months, or so, older than yours truly. Plus, the fact of the matter is that the equally locally renowned former sports commentator has been a party insider from the very beginning of the foundation and the establishment of the New Patriotic Party. This does not also necessarily mean or imply that the challenger, who is also a presidential-candidacy aspirant for the 2024 General Election, has been privy to each and every party horse-trading deal that transpired behind the scene among party movers and shakers.

Ultimately, what matters most here, venturing into the New Patriotic Party’s 2024 Presidential-Election Primary this coming November, is the aspirant who emerges with the wellspring of the support of an overwhelming majority of party delegates. Which also means the election of the candidate envisaged to be the best qualified to move the country at least a notch up the national development ladder and agenda. Put into much more simple language, it is far less an unsavory contest among individual personalities than it is a contest of competent and visionary leadership.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 2, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]