Ofosu Ampofo Defends His 'NCNC' Comment, Says NDC Won’t Misuse State Funds

The Chairman of the opposition NDC, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo has made a strong case in defence of his “No contributions No chop” comment.

The NDC’s National Chairman was recently criticised for making this comment, which many have since described as an indication that the party intends to limit development projects to party members.

But reacting to these claims the Mr. Ampofo revealed that his comment was taken out of context.

Addressing the press on Monday, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo clarified that his comment was meant to encourage party members to contribute either cash or kind to the 2020 campaign of the NDC.

“People contribute – and contribution is not only in terms of money – people are killing themselves. In the just-ended registration exercise, I went through my monitoring and I saw some constituency executives who slept at the registration for 20 days. Such people, when the party is in power, we will not forget about their contribution. So when we say ‘no contributions, no chop’, we are saying there is a pot of money somewhere that we are saying that when we win the elections, we are going squander [the state’s money], and I am not shying away from this comment,” he said.

Last month, NDC National Chairman Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, charged party folks not to hold back their contributions in helping return the largest opposition party back to power.

He said the party, once in power, would reward their efforts on the basis of “no contribution, no chop.”

The NDC voted John Dramani Mahama as its flagbearer ahead of the 2020 general elections.

The ex-president became the NDC's presidential aspirant after beating off competition from six other candidates.

Mahama polled a whopping 213,487 votes, representing 95.23% of the total votes cast.

The other competitors – Prof. Joshua Alabi, Alban Bagbin, Goosie Tanoh, Dr. Ekwow Spio Garbrah, Sylvester Mensah and Nurudeen Iddrisu – had 5% of the votes combined.

The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) won the 2016 elections by a landslide margin, polling 53% of the total votes cast while the NDC could only manage 44.4%.

Mahama's defeat in 2016 remains the worst ever election defeat suffered by an incumbent President in Ghana's Fourth Republic.