Me? Join NDC? Tofiakwa!

Mr Emmanuel Nti Fordjour, the immediate past chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has described as sheer propaganda claims in certain quarters that he was nicodemously tracing his steps back to NDC. I” don't have any intention of getting back to that party,” he emphasized. Mr. Fordjour, now a member of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), resigned from the NDC in a dramatic fashion at a press conference in Kumasi in protest of the violence that was unleashed on the supporters at the party's Koforidua Congress last December.

Mr Fordjour, who until his resignation, had served NDC for 13 years, said it's never true that he wants to re-trace his steps to NDC. “In fact the last thing I would ever do, was to do such a thing”. He wondered whether he could ever forget the violence, mayhem and hair-raising spectre that was perpetrated by the Azorka boys on their fellow party members. Their victims' only crime was that, they had dared to support Dr Obed Asamoah who was seeking a second-term in office as national chairman of NDC as the founder, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, openly campaigned against him to the advantage of his counterpart, Dr Kwabena Adjei who eventually emerged as chairman.

Mr Fordjour enquired which newspaper had published that article, claiming he did not know how the author of the report dreamt to make that publication about him. The former Ashanti Regional chairman of the NDC, however disclosed that on Monday, May 8, 2006, Mr Ohene-Kena, the former Eastern Regional chairman of NDC phoned him and told him that he had seen an article in the press and wanted to congratulate him over it.

According to Mr Fordjour, he however told Mr Ohene Kena to dismiss the contents of the publication, because they were mere propaganda. The former NDC kingpin in Ashanti, alleged that the former president and founder of the NDC and other people in the party, had thought that he was a dead horse; that was why they schemed to edge him out at the party's regional primaries, so why must they come for him now? He asked also whether in the face of the treatment meted out to him at the Koforidua Congress in December 2005, he would ever try to rescind his decision to resign from the NDC.

“If they want me back, why should they vote against me at the regional primaries,” he asked. At the Ashanti Regional Congress of the party, held at the tail end of 2005, Mr Daniel Ohene Agyekum, a former minister for Regional Integration, and also a former Ashanti Regional Minister, was voted as the new chairman of the party for Ashanti.

At his press conference in Kumasi on January 8, 2005, two weeks after the Koforidua Congress, among others, Mr Nti Fordjour indicated that he was quitting the NDC in solidarity with Dr Obed Yao Asamoah, who had left the party a week earlier. The fall-outs from the Koforidua Congress have resulted in a number of big fishes and small ones resigning from the NDC, with the biggest casualty, Dr Obed Asamoah quitting to found his own party, the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP). It is widely believed that all who resigned from NDC in solidarity with Dr Obed Asamoah, have pitched camp with the yet-to-be outdoored DFP.

Some of them are Miss Frances Awurabena Asiam, the former national women's organiser of NDC, Lawyer Kwaku Baah, former first vice-chairman of the party and a noted defender of the NDC during the Quality Grain Case. The rest are Nii Okaija Adamafio, the former minister of the Interior and former member of parliament (MP) for the Odododiodio Constituency and Mr Steve Akorli, the former Deputy Minister of Roads and Transport and former MP for Ho East. He also resigned from the NDC, saying he found it difficult to reconcile himself with working in a group where indiscipline is rewarded rather than punished! He resigned alongside a certain Johnson Rock Dabo, a dyed-in-the wool NDC in his constituency.

Hajia Hawawu Sulley, an NDC pillar at Nima, reputed to have organised women as cheer-leaders when Rawlings was being interrogated by National Security at the BNI Annex near 37 Hospital in 2002, has also resigned from NDC. The other woman who has also resigned in protest to the Koforidua troubles, is Madam Nathalia Affro-Newman, nee Auntie Bee, women's organiser of NDC in the Ayawaso East Constituency of the party. Already Stephen Adjei Mo-Shake, a youth organiser in Tema Manhean and 30 of his NDC youth have since also announced their resignation from the party, citing lack of internal democracy as the root cause.