Akufo-Addo is back

Nana Akufo-Addo PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2008 elections, Nana Akufo-Addo is reported to have cut short his tour of Europe and will touch down at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra next Sunday.

Sources said the decision of the flag-bearer had become necessary because he was inundated with calls from party faithful who said they could no longer endure the continuous abuses being unleashed on them.  

Nana Addo is expectedto arrive in Ghana along with a host of party bigwigs who had joined him on the European tour during which they held meetings with a number of high profile European politicians and the Ghanaian community there.

Reports said a number of party activists and supporters might be welcoming him at the airport on Sunday.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that Nana Addo, during the tour, kept an eagle eye on Ghana and closely monitored the country's current affairs. He was said to have on a number of instances personally intervened to restrain his party members from taking the law into their own hands to defend themselves against some abuses.

Interestingly the opposition flag-bearer was on record as having said he was not eager to criticise the new government because the latter ought to be given sometime to properly settle down.

While Nana Addo was away, his private Land Cruiser was forcefully snatched by operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and sent to the Osu Castle, the Seat of Government, where it was kept overnight on allegations that it was a stolen vehicle belonging to the state.

Investigations by the Castle later proved it was a private car.

As if under a military regime, private cars belonging to bigwigs of the NPP are being snatched from them by certain elements of the government under circumstances quite unacceptable by law.Occupants of such vehicles are usually asked to get down and hand over the keys; and in other situations, residences of the NPP big-shots are besieged and the cars towed away in the full glare of the public.

Also, several NPP supporters in many parts of the country were reportedly being brutally assaulted and their homes set ablaze by known activists of the ruling NDC.

Indeed during one of such onslaughts, one Suleman Alhassan, a known NPP supporter, died on arrival at the Korle-Bu Hospital after sustaining serious cutlass wounds inflicted on him by an NDC mob at the Konkomba Market in Accra.

After the incident, another NPP supporter, Hussein Alhassan, an elder brother of the deceased was attacked, butchered and his right eye scooped out of its socket by the very group that was suspected of killing Suleman.

At Atebubu Amanteng in the Ashanti region, the NPP constituency campaign chairman, Hamza Muhamed, reported to the police that his two-bedroom house was set on fire and all his property completely burnt by a group of people suspected to be agents of the NDC.

Still unrestrained, a group of NDC supporters celebrating the party's victory stormed the Traditional Palace of Nana Kweku Binnan II, Chief of Shama and ordered him to leave his palace because they suspected that he did not support the NDC.

Several hundreds of NPP members fled to the party's campaign office from various parts of the country to seek asylum after they were violently chased out of their homes because of their political affiliation.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo