DEPUTY MINISTER OF Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City, Mr Boniface Abubakar Saddique has snubbed calls by the rank and file of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to return into their fold for the 2004 elections.

According to Saddique, who is an independent MP for Salaga in the Northern Region, the suggestion by some members of the NDC for him to return to the party is even an affront to his dignity and an insult to his integrity. “It is only a fool who enters the army and doesn’t want the rank of a General,” he told the GYE NYAME CONCORD.

The soft-spoken Deputy Minister, who won the Salaga seat in 2000 after the NDC had refused to endorse him as its official candidate, stressed that going back to the NDC would materialize only over his dead body.

The MP, one of the beneficiaries of President Kufuor’s all-inclusive-policy noted with hilarity that he is not and would never be in a mood to make an about-face in his political career.

“If I am moving, I have to move forward and not backward and I don’t see anything that will let me re-join NDC”, he said.

Abubakar Saddique confirmed that he would contest the Salaga seat on the NPP’s ticket next year, and that “anybody who is telling you I am not standing on the ticket of NPP is giving you a false impression.”

Buttressing the point why he believes he has found his political roots, he said: “My paternal Uncle was secretary to Victor Owusu; my father was a founding member of the Progress Party [PP], my maternal uncle, Abbukari Alhassan, was the MP for Salaga for the PP in 1969.”

In what seemed like a swipe at the NDC, the Salaga MP said after they bitterly rejected him “somebody has picked me to form his foundation” adding that “the rejected stone shall always be the main cornerstone of the building”.

Explaining further, he said at the time the NDC party abandoned him in the run-up to the 2000 elections, his constituents cautioned both the Regional and National Executives but they replied that “if we put a fowl or a goat there, that animal would win”, arguing that that was why the NDC top hierarchy felt ashamed to approach him.

Saddique said there were some people who claim to be power brokers in the northern caucus of the NDC who are fomenting trouble in the Salaga constituency with the intention of using all available ways and means to unseat him.

However beaming with confidence, the Independent MP said for 30years, Salaga did not see a tarred road, but with the support of the NPP government the “whole township roads have been tarred within a short period”

“Again, mass electricity and water supply, a trade facility stuffed with sewing machines and hair dressing machines worth about ?1 billion and ?3 billion worth of hospital equipments have been provided to the people”, he said.

According to him, his constituents are a proud people today because “if they compare the sort of developments in the constituency for the past two years, it is something which has never existed before.”

Those positive developments, he said, had boosted his popularity, maintaining that it was a cross section of his constituents who advised him to put his weight behind President J A Kufuor and those constituents have not changed their minds.

Saddique also cautioned members of the NPP against bickering, factionalism, tribalism and sectionalism and asked them to channel all their energies into changing the state of the economy, while striving to do far better than their predecessors at the same time.

That, he said, should be the ultimate aim of every member of the party.