NDC 'juju' backfires 'Victory doves' refuse to fly

The opposition NDC's alleged resort to the spiritual realm and the invocation of deities to turn the results of the December polls in their favour was shown in broad daylight last Friday when senior officials of the party, after reciting some incantations on three doves and declaring that they were a sure sign of the party"s victory come December, threw the said doves into the air and ordered them to fly away.

But, to the surprise of the expectant crowd at the Tamale Jubilee Park which included party standard bearer John Evans Atta Mills, the birds not only refused to soar, but one made a quick u-turn and flew straight back to the dais where dignitaries including the NDC flagbearer were seated.

After repeated throws by some members of the gathering as well as NDC guru Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, who originally attempted to launch the birds into flight after the incantations, the exhausted birds refused to budge, only fluttering around the dais or just above head height.

A young man, perhaps having pity on the poor doves, seized one and attempted to carry it away for nourishment, but he was forced by some machomen to hurl it into the sky - from where it fluttered sadly back to earth.

The launching of the supposed spiritually charged birds was to pave the way for the NDC presidential candidate to speak to the crowd who came from all parts of the Northern Region, at the Tamale Jubilee Park.

However, Prof. Mills who was standing at the podium waiting for the 'juju doves' to fly high before he speaks was disappointed at the turn of events.

Finally taking the microphone, Prof Evans Atta Mills reiterated that the December 7 polls is between the NDC and the NPP and therefore called on people of the north to vote back the NDC to power to facilitate developments in the north.

Prof. Mills said, if voted to power the NDC will map out strategies to develop the three northern regions of the country, saying 'I Atta Mills promise to be just, I promise you peace and I promise you development'.

Prof. Mills pledged that the Tamale airport would be turned into an international airport, 'therefore when you are to go to Mecca you don't have to travel down to Accra again, you would take off and land here in Tamale,' he said.

The NDC presidential candidate also promised to turn the Tamale Teaching Hospital into a first class teaching hospital so that medical students at the UDS would stop going to the south for their practices.

Playing the populist card, General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketiah told the NDC supporters his party, if it wins the upcoming poll, would find the killers of the late overlord of Dagbon, Ya Na Yakubu Andani II and the forty others and that of the late Issah Mobilla, a former CPP activist who was killed while in military custody in Tamale.

Asiedu Nketiah accused the New Patriotic Party government of deliberately fomenting trouble in Ghana while paying lip service to the quest for peace. 

He admitted that, NPP's Northern Development Fund and/or the NDC's Savannah Development Plan will come to nought if there is no peace in the north.

Meanwhile, some supporters of the party have expressed misgivings about the refusal of the birds to fly, especially after they were linked to the party's fortunes in the upcoming elections.

Speaking to this reporter, Fuseini Adams, fully clad in NDC regalia, said, 'All these are bad omens for the party in this year's elections but we will try'.

Recently, the party's Ashanti Regional Chairman Daniel Ohene Agyekum invoked the Subin river to curse the party's detractors who he says deliberately spread falsehood about the party founded by Jerry John Rawlings, who has dared everyone including President Kufuor to visit the Antoa Nyamaa shrine to 'confess their sins.'