SHFORD hails Nana-Bawumia ticket

By: Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumasi
The Ashanti Youth for Development (ASHFORD), a youth advocacy group in Kumasi, has extended expressed its appreciation to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and the party's National Executive Council (NEC), whose untiring effort resulted in the nomination of Dr. Muhamadu Bawumia as the running mate of the  flagbearer.

Messrs Seth Kwadwo Boateng, Adams Seidu, and Saeed Mumuni,  Spokesperson, President and secretary respectively of the group, in a statement in Kumasi, stated that the Nana Addo-Bawumia pair was perfect and a comprehensive combination of an astute legal luminary and skillfully dexterous and an economic savvy.

ASHFORD indicated that it was enthused about Dr. Bawumia's emphasis of his readiness to partner Nana Addo and the NPP to deliver on the vision of free secondary education and making Ghana the manufacturing hub of West Africa.

'In today's Ghana, education and joblessness are the key problems confronting the youth, so therefore, any political party that has these issues as its priorities will certainly have the blessing of a youth advocacy group like ours,' it noted.

The group condemned the National Democratic Congress (NDC) criticism of Nana Addo's vision for a free education as too ambitious and unachievable, saying nothing was unachievable with grim determination in this computer age, and referred the NDC to the fact that even the sky, which was perceived to be the last level of human achievement, had been surpassed with the advent of space exploration.

ASHFORD mocked thus: 'Of course, if you (NDC) have the payment of dubious debts as a priority, free secondary education will certainly be unachievable for you.'

The group has, therefore, pledged to marshal all the energies and faculties of its teeming youth to mount a vigorous campaign to ensure that the NPP wins power in the December 2012 general elections to implement its pro-youth policies and programmes for the betterment of the lives of Ghanaians.

ASHFORD also called on the various youth groups to join forces to give Dr. Bawumia the necessary push that will give him the power to implement his vision, for the youth to prove the doubting Thomases in the NDC wrong.