Former President John Mahama used his “paddy”, Stan Dogbe, a presidential staffer wrongly in his administration, a situation that made the former journalist feel overly powerful, flagbearer hopeful of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Alban Bagbin, has said.

“Stan Dogbe obviously is a very good paddy of the former president, nobody begrudges the former president for bringing him in; but where he positioned him.

“Don’t forget the history of Stan Dogbe, he has never been a member of the National Democratic Congress. … It’s not only him, there are a number of members that were nominated by him who told the public … that they are not members of our party.

“You see, party politics is not for the undecided. Anybody that is undecided but has the technical capacity, there is a place to place the person,” Mr Bagbin told Gifty Andoh Appiah in an interview.

In his view, rather than Mr Mahama using Mr Dogbe as a front-liner at the presidency, he could have been more beneficial in the background.

“As a good friend, and, if you needed him, he is a very good media person; he would have just been tapping in from behind the scenes. You could use him to do a lot of work, running around doing things for you, but to position him as one of the front-liners…

“He didn’t just handle the media, he went beyond that and was all over in the office of the president; there was everywhere that the most powerful person was Stan Dogbe, and I experienced it one day and I said: ‘Wow, you believe that you can do this? I can’t believe it’, but for good reason, I accepted because I was a Majority Leader, you couldn’t have compared his position to my position…” Mr Bagbin recalled.