Let's Stop Fighting Our Own: How Do We Come Together For 2028?

The NPP's greatest enemy is not the NDC. It is the division within our own ranks. Politics is a contest of ideas, leadership and organisation, but no political party wins a national election when its members spend more energy destroying one another than defeating their opponents.

As the New Patriotic Party looks toward 2028, we have to confront an uncomfortable truth: we cannot fight our own people with everything we have and still expect to have the strength left over to confront the NDC at the ballot box. It is time we stopped treating fellow NPP members as permanent enemies.

Competition is not the same thing as destruction

Political competition within a party is normal. Candidates will have different ambitions, delegates will back different people, and constituency executives won't always see eye to eye. That's simply democracy at work. What turns dangerous is when that competition curdles into bitterness, vindictiveness and exclusion, when we can no longer contest today and work together tomorrow.

If someone wins a primary, the supporters of the person who lost should not become enemies of the winner. And the winner, in turn, must not treat the losing side as political liabilities to be sidelined. An internal election is supposed to produce a winner, not a permanent underclass of losers. We cannot keep running a system where every internal contest leaves behind another group of members who feel abandoned or deliberately shut out.

We have not forgotten the lessons of 2024

2024 should have taught us something. When a party turns on itself, the damage doesn't stay inside the party, it eventually shows up at the polling station. Disappointed supporters go quiet. Loyal members become reluctant to campaign. Activists drift away. Organisers lose the fire. And voters, sensing the division, start to wonder whether the party even deserves their trust. So we have to ask ourselves honestly: if we can't unite among ourselves, how do we convince the Ghanaian voter that we're ready to govern again? We can't. It's that simple. 2028 will not be won with social-media insults or internal propaganda aimed at our own people. It will be won through organization, humility, reconciliation, real communication with the grassroots, and a message that actually speaks to the country.

The person beside you today may be the person you need tomorrow

One of the oldest mistakes in politics is assuming that today's opponent stays tomorrow's opponent. The delegate who didn't vote for you today could be the one who mobilizes five hundred votes for you tomorrow. The executive who disagreed with you might have the strongest grassroots network in the constituency. The candidate you beat may have exactly the experience the party needs to rebuild. Even the member who criticized your leadership might be pointing at a real problem, not trying to sabotage you. We have to learn to separate disagreement from disloyalty. Not every criticism is sabotage. Not every different opinion is betrayal. Not every ambition is rebellion. Sometimes the person pushing back on us is the one helping us get better.

So how do we actually come together for 2028?

Reconciliation has to be a deliberate strategy, not a slogan. Saying "let's unite" doesn't make unity happen on its own. It takes real work at the polling station, the electoral area, the constituency, the region, and the national level. Those who feel excluded need to be heard. Those who feel offended need to be engaged. Those who lost need to be treated with respect, and those who won need to show some humility. Reconciliation isn't weakness; it's political intelligence.

We need to stop keeping score after internal elections. The party has to stop tracking who supported whom "he was with Candidate A," "she backed Candidate B," "they were against our man." That mindset is corrosive. Once an election is over, the party has to become bigger than the candidate. If we keep punishing people for who they supported internally, we'll end up with a party full of factions and an empty centre. Every capable member deserves a place in rebuilding the party. A united party doesn't mean everyone gets the position they wanted, it means everyone knows they still have a stake in the party's future.

We need real avenues for former candidates, unsuccessful aspirants, grassroots activists, young people, women, professionals and former executives to contribute. Losing an internal election should never mean losing your relevance to the party. Leadership has to lead by example. Unity has to start from the top and run all the way down national leaders, regional leaders, constituency executives, polling station executives, ordinary members. We cannot preach unity while quietly rewarding only our own faction. The leadership culture we build for 2028 has to be one of inclusion, not revenge.

And we need to fight ideas, not people. Disagree with someone's position? Challenge the position. Disagree with a policy? Offer an alternative. Think someone is wrong? Bring the evidence. But we should not be tearing down people's characters just because they belong to a different faction within the same party. Our opponents outside the party will attack us soon enough we don't need to do their work for them by destroying one another first.

So who is the real enemy?
It isn't any individual NPP member. It's the political alternative the NDC represents heading into 2028 and even that has to be understood correctly. The NDC is a political opponent, not an enemy in the literal sense. Ghana's democracy runs on competition, not hatred. Our job isn't to hate the NDC; it's to build an NPP strong enough, united enough and credible enough that Ghanaians choose to trust it again in 2028. That means spending less time fighting ourselves and more time listening to the people we want to govern.

2028 calls for a new political culture, one where competition doesn't curdle into hatred, defeat doesn't become exclusion, and victory doesn't breed arrogance. Where criticism isn't mistaken for betrayal, and loyalty doesn't mean blind obedience. Where leadership means service, not domination. Most of all, a culture where losing an internal election doesn't decide who belongs to the party and who doesn't. We need to be able to lose a contest today and still show up to campaign tomorrow with a clear conscience. That's how institutions get stronger. The NPP is bigger than any one candidate, any constituency executive, any regional chairman, any national officer, any presidential aspirant and it is certainly bigger than any faction.

So, fellow NPP patriots let's stop fighting our own with everything we've got. Let's stop treating fellow members as enemies simply because they backed a different candidate, and stop dragging yesterday's wounds into tomorrow's national campaign.

Let's reach across the divides within our own party: let the winner extend a hand to the defeated, and let the defeated accept the result with dignity. Let leaders open their doors. Let members speak freely. Let grievances be heard and old wounds finally heal. Because in 2028, nobody will be asking who supported whom in yesterday's internal contest. They'll be asking whether the NPP was united enough to earn their confidence.

The choice is ours. We can keep fighting ourselves until there's nothing left worth fighting for, or we can unite now, rebuild together, and face 2028 as one family.

Let us choose unity. Let us choose reconciliation. Let us choose inclusion. Let us choose victory together.

One party. One family. One purpose. One mission: 2028.

NPP! UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.
Hon. Theophilus Kodzo Doh
First Vice Chair-Elect
Afadjato South, NPP
Volta Region