NDC decides: Asiedu Nketia cruises to victory

The outgoing Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Koku Anyidoho could not outperform his boss, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who beat him to keep his position.

Anyidoho polled a mere 1,625 votes after ballots were counted in an election in which over 9,000 delegates voted.

Many had described the decision by Koku Anyidoho to contest the 62-year-old incumbent as risk that could cost him his political future in the largest opposition party.

Nevertheless, he kept believing in the assurances from delegates he interacted with from the length and breadth of the country during his campaign tours, that he is the one to pull a surprise at the end of the contest.

Asiedu Nketia had endured a barrage of accusation from some party stalwarts including former Central Region Chairman, Bernard Allotey Jacobs, who urged party delegates to vote him out.

According to Jacobs, some executives at the party’s headquarters had organised themselves into a mafia and are stalling the progress of the party ahead of general elections in 2020.

However, after sorting of ballots was done at the Fantasy Dome where the NDC held it’s national delegates’ congress, the piled up papers for Mr. Asiedu Nketia far exceeded what Koku Anyidoho obtained.

Provisional results indicate that the 1,625 polled by Anyidoho was a pale shadow of what Asiedu Nketia which are still being counted.

Asiedu Nketia continues his tenure and is set to become the party’s longest-serving General Secretary.

Earning the nickname ‘ General Mosquito’ for his lanky frame, the former NDC MP spent 12 years in Parliament before stepping down graciously in 2004.

He had wanted to join his wife in Canada. But that travel was not meant to be after his party’s rank and file mounted pressure on him to take up the position of General Secretary of the NDC.

At the party’s delegate congress in December 2005, he won by almost 80% of the votes to become the 3rd General Secretary of the NDC.

At a re-election contest held in Tamale in January 2010, he was delivered a 93% vote of confidence. In the 2014 version, Abdullah Ishaq Farrakhan could only get 606 to Johnson Asiedu Nketiah’s 2685 votes.

Under ‘General Mosquito’, the position of NDC General Secretary became the least challenged. Koku Anyidoho’s entry had held the potential for a scare. But it turns out, Koku has been scared.