Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto (OAA), the previous minister of food and agriculture, resigned from his job on January 10, 2023, in order to run for the role of New Patriotic Party (NPP) flag bearer.
Severious Kale-Dery (SKD), our Education and Agriculture Editor, interviewed him in his home.
The interview excerpts are listed below.
Kale-Dery severe (SKD): Hon., you left your position as the minister of food and agriculture three months ago. Since then, what have you been up to?
OAA's Dr. Owusu Afriyie Ako: I've used the time since I left office to talk to stakeholders about what we'll need to do to win the general election in 2024. I sought advice from the polling places all the way up to their coordinating supervisors, constituency executives, and the regional and national levels.
Therefore, the three months have been very well employed in an effort to comprehend the nature of the issues this party is facing. Basically, I'm running for office because of things that I saw as poorly managed within the party and that almost cost us the 2020 elections.
What are some of the things that the party isn't managing properly, according to SKD?
OAA: Considering the amount of work completed during the Akufo-Addo administration's first term, work in which I played a significant role, I believe that the performance was very satisfactory in the sense that we anticipated that the outcomes would have reflected the recognition of the admirable work carried out by this government. Unfortunately, the situation was rather different. We anticipated that the over 169 seats we had in Parliament would increase to 200 constituencies, increasing the 1.5 million majority President Akufo-Addo held over President Mahama in 2016.
But what did we witness following the elections? Currently, there are 137 NPP and 137 NDC members of parliament. The majority was decisively won by the NPP, with only one independent candidate who had previously served as an NPP member and was so dissatisfied with the party's internal politics that he decided to run as an independent.
Therefore, that is what is different. If not, Parliament is divided. The Right Honourable NDC presently controls the position of Speaker of Parliament. The vote was won by Alban Bagbin over the Right Honourable Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, who has demonstrated considerable expertise in the first legislative session of the current government.
You can see that, despite our successful 2020 campaign, things are not going smoothly. You can't even recall any campaign messages if you look at the NDC. They lacked a singular campaign message that would have persuaded Ghanaians to vote for them. On the other side, we received a lot of responses confirming that we would continue the initiatives and programs we had started during the first term and add new ones.
Unfortunately, there were too many internal party disputes for us to make an impression on the electorate.
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