A National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary aspirant for Jaman North, Mr. Abdul Wahab Seidu has emphasized that the party needed a unifier to recapture the seat from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in election 2016.
He, therefore, appealed to the constituency delegates to give him the mandate as the party’s parliamentary candidate in the upcoming primary, for a landslide victory in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Mr. Seidu, 36, and a banker with the Suma Rural Bank, who is vying for the seat with four other aspirants, made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Sampa in the Jaman North District of the Brong-Ahafo Region.
The four are Messrs Augustine Kofi Sah, Constituency Secretary; Freeman Abdullai, also a banker with the Nafana Rural Bank, Abraham Sah, National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) Coordinator for Jaman North, and Frederick Yaw Ahenkwaa, Deputy Regional Secretary of the NDC.
Mr. Seidu said the party lost the seat marginally by 202 votes to the NPP in election 2012 due to gross disunity and internal wrangling among the leaders and their followers that were left unresolved before that elections.
He explained that the NDC had held onto the Jaman North seat since it was carved out of the former Jaman Constituency in 2004, but divisions among members, especially the leadership, consequently divided the supporters and sympathizers, and dearly cost them the seat.
He said Mr. Alexander Asum Ahensan, who is now Ghana’s Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and the then Minister of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, narrowly lost to Mr. Siaka Stevens of the NPP who is now the incumbent.
Mr. Seidu stressed that notwithstanding the loss of the parliamentary seat, the NDC won the presidential election overwhelmingly as President John Dramani Mahama secured over 17,000 votes, while Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo of the NPP had a little over 12,000 votes.
