Is Chairman Asiedu-Nketia Calling for a Return to PNDC Junta Dictatorship?

Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, truth be told, is unarguably the least credible and qualified leader of any major legitimately registered political party in the country to bitterly and cynically complain about the economically burdensome implementation of the “One-Person, One-Vote” landmark decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) at all levels of the country’s electoral process, in particular vis-a-vis the election of Presidential and Parliamentary Candidates in political party primaries, as opposed to the bribe-ridden present Delegate System (See “One-Man One Vote Primaries Could Cost NDC More Than GHS [sic] 14 Million - Asiedu-Nketiah[sic]” Modernghana.com 8/6/26).

In the recent past, the longest-reigning former General-Secretary or the presently ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), and currently the latter party’s National Chairman, had rigidly and autocratically ensured that President John “Which Payola Package Are You Talking About?” Dramani Mahama ran unopposed as the party’s Presidential Candidate, even though it was crystal clear that there were better qualified and more competent candidates for the topmost ticket of the party.

Nobody has so soon forgotten the flagrant rigging of the NDC’s National Delegates’ Voters Register in order to ensure that Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, the former Atta-Mills-appointed Finance and Economic Planning Minister, would be summarily precluded from contesting the party’s 2020 Presidential Primary. As well, not many of us have forgotten the imperious and the autocratic blocking of Mr. George Boateng, the former Oyarefa, Greater-Accra Region, District or Constituency Youth Organizer of the National Democratic Congress, in September 2015, by the wiry brooding-visaged man popularly known as “General Mosquito” from fiercely and robustly challenging the then, as now, incumbent President and then Candidate Mahama, who had literally ran the country’s economy aground, from contesting the party’s Presidential Primary.

Ultimately, not only would The Mosquito General summarily expel Mr. Boateng from the party, the former Rawlings-appointed Deputy Minister of Defense and, later, a superannuated graduate of the Command and Senior-Staff College of the Ghana Armed Forces would also summarily dismiss staff members at the party’s Accra Headquarters who had dared to avail Mr. Boateng the requisite documents to enable the failed Mahama challenger to file his nomination for the party’s topmost ticket.

So, it is irrefutably clear that General Mosquito does not believe in democratic transparency and procedural integrity, much less the sort of statutorily mandated “One-Person, One-Vote” recently handed down by the Apex Court, to wit, on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. Consequently, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia’s bitter plaint about the prohibitive cost of running or conducting a parliamentary primary on the basis of Universal Popular Franchise is just another ruse or red-herring strategically aimed at flagrantly subverting the diktat or the democratic mandate of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution. Even more telling of such mischievously calculated act of plain chicanery regards the open secret fact that during the party’s last Presidential-Election Primary, Candidate Mahama was widely reported by the local media to have shelled out liquid cash far in excess of the GH¢ 14 Million that the Imperial National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress dubiously claims to have been spent in 2014. And that was just payola packages parceled out for the approximately 270,000 Delegates who were eligible to vote, as many of us learned to our utter shock and horror, albeit not the least bit surprisingly so.

Now, this revelation came to light after nearly half of the allegedly bought-and-paid-for Mahama Delegates, more than an estimated 100,000 of them, let on to the local media that some constituency and regional party chairpersons had personally pocketed monetary payola packages - strategically labeled as “Transportation Money” to and from the estimated 8,000 polling stations dotted across the country.

Our unwavering contention here is that cost or expenditure is absolutely not a part of the major worries of seasoned party leaders like General Mosquito. Rather, it is the practical inability of these robber-baron politicians to buy the votes of the several millions of eligible party members in good standing, once the implementation of the Apex Court-ordered parliamentary primaries on the basis of the popular vote, as practiced in the overwhelming majority of many a civilized and a democratically advanced country. You see, under the recently proscribed Delegate System, only a handful of autocratic and megalomaniacal political party bosses and leaders routinely constitute themselves into de-facto Kingmakers and Queenmakers, with the overwhelming majority of dues-paying members - that is what “members in good standing” means - acting or serving as passive onlookers or virtual spectators.

Which is why in one of my previous columns, Yours Truly highlighted the fact that the current political praxis or culture in Ghana presently is a veritable “Plutocracy” rather than a “Democracy.” It is the filthy rich and extortionately powerful party dons like Messrs. Mahama, Asiedu-Nketia and Haruna “The Shameless Plagiarist” Iddrisu and the Raw Cocoa Beans-Exporting Cassiel Ato-Kwamena Forson who are doing all the shot-calling.

The salutary implementation of the “One-Person, One-Vote” regime of our parliamentary process is not the least bit apt to cure or cauterize the pathological payola mentality of our career politicians and kleptocratic leaders, for the most part. Trust me, I am not in the least bit naive about this 500 Years of Criminally Cultivated Psychological Mindset of the Average Ghanaian Robber-Baron Politician. But it is surefire likely to significantly reduce the deleterious impact of the seemingly intractable bane of our socioeconomic, cultural and existential misery.

Which is also why about the only way that the Central Government may be obligated to foot the bill or the tab for party primary elections, under the new Supreme Court Order, will be for political party dues to be significantly reduced to the barest minimum. And to ensure that accountability in regard to the regular auditing of party finances by the Internal Revenue Service or Department, whichever of the latter two descriptives applies, is rigidly enforced.