Leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Filson Awankua has asked regional executives of the party in the Upper East Region to apologize for the party’s poor showing in that part of the country in the last elections.
According to Awankua, the regional executives failed the party woefully and must take responsibility for the massive defeat it suffered both in the presidential and parliamentary elections in the region.
He noted that the party had been making significant inroads in the region since 1992.
However, ineffective leadership in recent years has seen its votes and support in the place plummeted in the last two elections, he opined.
“I am a member of the party. I would like them to seek forgiveness from me and to apologize to me for failing me. Because we put you there to work for the party,” he stated.
“In every election, what is important is the results you get. We don’t want to hear excuses. It’s the results. And what was the results? It was bad. If you look at from 1992, NPP has had exponential growth in this region. But from 2020, unfortunately, we’ve been dropping.”
Awankua stated that although party folks campaigned vigorously in the region at the peril of their lives, leadership failed to take steps to effectively coordinate and consolidate their efforts.
The regional leadership, he added, also failed to attend to the needs of supporters and ensure opportunities created through government policies tickled down to them, leaving many of them disgruntled.
He believes this led to the party losing the only parliamentary seat it held and failing to win any other seat in the region in the 2024 elections.
The NPP’s performance in the Upper East Region has been declining since 2020.
The party won three seats in the 2016 elections but lost all of them and only manage to win one in the 2020 elections.
It, however, lost that only seat in the 2024 polls and currently holds none in the region.
Some attributed the party’s poor performance in the region to the escalation of the Bawku conflict, which was largely blamed on the Akufo-Addo administration’s inaction and which had sparked anger against the party in the leading up to the elections.
But for Awankua, the NPP’s dwindling performance in the Upper East Region can’t be solely blamed on the conflict.
“I would say that if we had put a robust system, even with the East, now the East has 6 seats, what about the nine? We can’t just blame it on the unfortunate situation in the East.”
