The Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia popularly known as ‘General Mosquito’ has justified the claims to the change in leadership of the party in Parliament which forms part of the reshuffling process to help the party capture political power in the 2024 elections.

According to the Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, the decision forms part of the nationwide restructuring processes the party is undertaking. The re-organization of structures is in order to be positioned in the right corner for the elections next year.

“We started more than a year ago, we started at the branch level. We have since done elections in about 40, 000 branches and then from there we proceeded to the constituency level. We are done largely with all the constituencies; we have done regional elections and we just completed our national election and the next is to look at our leadership in Parliament. That is what we have just done.”
Johnson Asiedu Nketia

Touching on the timing of the party’s decision and its envisioned upshot, Mr. Nketia stressed that the timing is in line with plans to fully prepare the party for the race ahead. Thus, since the environment and world keep changing rapidly, leadership must also change to catch up.

The chairman of the National Democratic Congress expressed that as the days of elections get closer, there will be debates all over the floors of parliament on issues of energy, the economy and infrastructure, hence the reason the NDC made changes to put the right and best people in such fields to properly argue their stance.

“We know for instance that going into election 2024, the economy is going to be the major battle ground and so many of the debates will focus on the economy. So, you better put your best man in economy forward and that is what we have done.

“We also looked at energy. You know the petroleum and electricity challenges, so we needed to settle on Kofi Armah Buah, our former minister to be the Deputy Minority Leader. The other area is infrastructure, Kwame Agbodza being our man in infrastructure should play a key role, that generally is what informed the changes.”
Johnson Asiedu Nketia

The National Chairman of the NDC said although the party tried to have equal representation of all 16 regions, that cannot happen because there are only five positions to be filled. He further stated that the change has nothing to do with the performance of the leaders and made reference to the fact that even football coaches change players when they realize they are facing a formidable opposition and as such the best players are needed for the right positions.

NDC Members disagree with the changes made

Some NDC legislators have described the new development as a coup d’etat but Mr. Nketia has reassured the masses that the outgoing leadership of the party were duly informed of the new decision and that formal letters were written to all of them.

“We sent a senior person to the party to engage them and let them know that this is the way we are going to handle it. Naturally, it will not be a pleasant news but at least you need to give them the respect, so we communicated to them before writing the letters to them.”
Johnson Asiedu Nketia

The NDC legislators who were not in favor of these decisions made, questioned the rationale behind this new development because these are perilous times and they need people who have worked in such positions for long and are popularly known in order for the party to regain power.

According to the party, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has taken over from Haruna Iddrisu as the new Minority Leader. Ellembelle MP, Kofi Armah Boah will replace James Klutse Avedzi as Deputy Minority Leader. Kwame Agbodza becomes the Chief Whip for the opposition side and will be deputized by Banda MP, Ahmed Ibrahim and Ada legislator, Comfort Doyo Ghansah respectively.

th 1 — Dr Cassiel Ato Forson (Right) and Haruna Iddrisu (Left)

Tamale Central MP, Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed audibly explained that as far as he and other colleague NDC MPs are concerned, the current crop of parliamentary leadership has been diligent in their duties. The displeased lawmaker said the timing of the decision by the party’s hierarchy is ‘wrong’.

Honorable Mohammed therefore, questioned the rationale for the change and criticized the party’s leadership for failing to consult the entire Minority Caucus before effecting the changes. He objected to this as wrong timing of changing parliamentary leadership.