Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, Vice-Presidential Candidate for the New Patriotic Party for the 2016 elections, enjoyed a loudly enthusiastic reception at this year’s dinner/dance of NPP UK. Dr Bawumia, together with an impressive delegation from the NPP mother party in Ghana, was guest of honour at the event on Friday 14 November in north London.

Addressing the hall, which was packed to capacity, Dr Bawumia had a clear message for NPP members, friends and sympathisers: Ghana is being woefully mismanaged by the incompetent National Democratic Congress regime of John Dramani Mahama, Ghanaians are suffering, and the party owes the people of Ghana a great duty to leave no stone unturned in its quest to oust the NDC in the 2016 elections.

In his rousing speech, the guest of honour, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, noted that when NPP left office in January 2009, Ghana’s public debt was GH¢9.6 billion and that today, after just six years of “governance” by the NDC, the national debt is hovering around GH¢67.5 billion. This mess, he declared, is the effect of sheer mismanagement, wholesale misapplication of the national treasury and the systematic destruction of the economy underJohn Dramani Mahama and his NDC. No one else can be held responsible, Dr Bawumia said.

Despite repeated warnings from the opposition parties and the several red flags NPP raised about the quality of information from the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Statistical Service, the government thinks it can run an economy on propaganda, the NPP’s running mate said. Today, after the NPP’s sterling success in transforming Ghana from a highly indebted country to a booming economy on the verge of middle income – without the NDC’s benefit of high cocoa and gold prices, without its substantial revenues from oil, and without its punitive taxes on everything from cutlasses to condoms – Ghana is on its knees, begging the IMF for a bailout. Dr Bawumia bewailed the certain repercussions in the next two years: even more hardship and unnecessary suffering for our people, ordinary Ghanaians.

To loud applause, Dr Bawumia, who on 13 November was named chairman of NPP’s Electoral Reforms Committee, declared that NPP will do battle to monitor all work in preparation for the 2016 elections as well as all activity at every polling station in Ghana. The party must ensure that every single ballot paper is counted and accurately recorded. Nothing must be taken for granted, he said, to cries of agreement from guests.

The NDC has wrecked our country, Dr Bawumia said. Apart from the unsustainable new levels of public debt: youth unemployment is at record levels, the corruption plaguing the country today is unparalleled in Ghana’s history, pension funds are being looted and misused, the national school feeding programme established by the NPP government of John Agyekum Kufuor is in tatters,and endless power cuts have crippled all businesses, productive enterprise, education and social life across the country.

Dr Bawumia insisted that NPP cannot fail Ghanaians. He acknowledged the huge burden of expectation on NPP and the party’s leadership, but said NPP has no choice but to succeed and deliver to the people. He appealed to NPP UK and other overseas branches to support the party’s mobilisation efforts and said he was eager to work closely with them to achieve their targets. His speech received rounds of cheers and a standing ovation.

The dinner/dance, an annual fundraiser, was organised this year by the Women’s and Nasara wings of NPP UK in partnership with its Fundraising Committee. Despite the cold and damp of early winter, it attracted an audience of more than 400 people, including large numbers of party members from NPP UK Chapters in Milton Keynes, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, the Midlands, Reading, Northampton, and beyond.

In his introductory speech to the fired-up audience, the Chairman of NPP UK, Mr Michael Ansah, congratulated the global NPP on its successful conduct of successive internal elections this year to select national executives and the NPP’s flagbearer for 2016, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. He also congratulated Dr Bawumia on his unopposed re-selection by Nana Akufo-Addo as the NPP’s running mate for 2016. And he welcomed three MPs from Ghana – Mr Solomon Boar (Bunkpurugu), Dr Ben Sagri (Walewale) and Mr Mustapha Ussif(Yagaba Kubori) and Mohamed Salisu Bamba MP for Ejura Sekyeredumase – whom NPP UK successfully supported in their 2012 campaigns to wrestle all three seats from NDC control.

Chairman Ansah stated that NPP UK has a clear two-year plan for “mobilising all its resources – human, financial, intellectual and strategic – towards the single purpose of winning in 2016”. He identified the main target groups for the next election; and once again he pledged NPP UK’s support for NPP Ghana towards capturing these groups and ensuring that the vote of every Ghanaian is guaranteed, protected, counted and accurately declared in 2016.

Chairman Ansah reaffirmed his own commitment to NPP, the party he and millions of other Ghanaians have chosen, he said, because of its respect for social and economic justice, its belief in private enterprise and its track record in achieving planned, structured development and economic growth. He urged guests and the NPP at large to work hard to rebuild and secure the “broad coalition of shared hope, shared aspiration, and shared destiny” that NPP, the true “party of ONE NATION”, established between 2001 and 2008.

My Alex Dadey, Chairman of the NPP UK Fundraising Committee, also addressed the gathering, spelling out the UK Branch fundraising activities and programmes, and thanked members for their continued support.

Among the large number of other dignitaries who graced the dinner/dance were Mr Solomon Boar(MP for Bunkpurugu), Dr Banbangi Sagri (MP for Walewale), Mohammed Salisu Bamba (MP of Ejura) and Mr Mustapha Ussif (MP for Yagaba Kubori. Others were Mr Charles Bissue, Western Regional Secretary of NPP; Members of the Young Executive Forum , executives of external Branches of the NPP; members of the Muslim community in the UK, the Christian Council UK and the Ghana Media Association UK; current and past members of the UK Branch executives, and council of elders.

There were messages of solidarity from guests, friends of NPP and well-wishers as well as Christian, Muslim and traditional prayers for God’s blessings for NPP.

Nana Yaw Sarpong

Communications Director, NPP UK

07983 302 369