Essilfie Kumi proposes strategies for NPP to ‘break the 8’

Mr Bright Essilfie Kumi, a National Organiser aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has proposed wide-ranging measures to strengthen party structures at all levels to enable the Party to retain power in the 2024 general elections.

The 2020 Parliamentary candidate for Asikuma Odoben Brakwa, said his engagements with Party members especially at the grassroots indicated that “the ground is not fertile” and emphasised the need for the Party to work to appease its base and win the support of everyone.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Kumi said members of the NPP at the grassroots as well as Party financiers “are angry with the Party” due to what he described as “unfair distribution of opportunities.”

He said members who worked hard to secure victory for the NPP in 2016 and 2020, had been side-lined, a situation, he added, was as a result of the lack of data to assess the input and contributions of Party members and supporters and reward them accordingly.

Mr Kumi said if he was given the mandate as National Organiser for the NPP, his regime would set up a database system that would ensure a fair distribution of opportunities for Party members and businessmen who invest in the Party.

He said the Database System Analysis would capture the names of Party members, when they joined the Party, their contributions to the Party, as well as record all the contributions of the Party’s financiers to ensure even distribution of opportunities.

“Grounds are not fertile as we had in 2016. The Party has suffered a torch and where we are now, it is as if there is no system for fair distribution of opportunities that would get to everyone irrespective of the location.

“The system I will implement will break that inequality in the distribution of opportunities and help to tone down the tension,” he said.

Mr Kumi said his prime goal was to make “NPP bright again” and rallied delegates to support his bid to “turn things around” and make the Party more attractive on the ground.

“I want to organise the Party to become formidable because I just don’t want the break the eight to be just sloganeering. There should be some kind of plan and policies and how we intend to implement it to achieve the objective,” he said.

He took issue with the NPP’s communication machinery, saying that although the Party had made significant strides since it assumed office in 2016, it had failed to effectively communicate its achievements to Ghanaians.

Mr Kumi said if he were given the mandate, his administration would set up the National Communication Institute to train members in their own language at all levels to articulate the ideologies, achievements and policies of the Party.

He said the Institute would also offer allowances to Party communicators to encourage them to effectively discharge their duties.

Mr Kumi said the NPP must conduct a healing tour after its national executives election to unify the Party ahead of the 2024 general elections.

“We must explain to the people because our communication system has broken down,” he said.

Barring any change in schedule, the NPP will hold its National Executive Elections in Accra from July 15 to July 17, 2022 to elect officers to run the affairs of the party for the next four years.

Per the Party’s constitution, the presidential candidate for the Party in the 2024 elections will be elected next year – a year to the general elections.