Politics of Sunday, 30 April 2023

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

NPP vigilante group, Invisible Forces, was created to undermine me - Kwabena Agyepong

NPP flagbearer hopeful Kwabena Agyepong play videoNPP flagbearer hopeful Kwabena Agyepong

Former General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwabena Agyepong has shared details about his forceful ousting from office barely some few months after he was elected in 2015.

According to the now flagbearer hopeful of the party, his removal from office was a deliberate orchestration by some persons who executed their agenda by creating the party’s vigilante group, the Invisible Forces.

“Before I became the General Secretary, had you heard of any group called Invisible Forces? It was never there; it was the creation of those who wanted to undermine me and remove me from office. On that day I had to have my car taken to my private office before I could enter, I then went to sit in the boardroom because I had then started renovations in the General Secretary office, so I had not started using the place. The Council of Elders were in a meeting at Alisa Hotel where they heard through the radio about the melee going on with the police getting involved,” Mr Agyepong recalled the attack on him at the NPP’s headquarters on October 25, 2015.

According to him, the entire chaos that was witnessed in the NPP at the time was meant to get himself and the then National Chairman, Paul Afoko removed from post.

“At the time there were a lot of noise even when we had barely spent two months in office. It was all an orchestration to create the impression. The person from his own mouth confessed that he had been sent to remove me and Afoko from the party headquarters. This is a person I had not set my eyes on since we held the congress. I kept quiet because I knew some elders were witnesses,” he said.

Following the attack Kwabena Agyepong, an aide to the former scribe, Davies Opoku confirmed the incident in an interview.

"There were some exchanges between him and the first vice Freddie Blay at a meeting... a mob attacked him after. But he's fine," he told Starr News at the time.

At the time of the said attack, the party had already suspended Paul Afoko as chairman and would later go on to suspend Mr Agyepong as well as Second National Vice Chairman Sammy Crabbe.

Whereas Afoko was suspended for allegedly sabotaging the campaign of the then presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Kwabena Agyepong and Sammy Crabbe who were his allies were handed the indefinite suspension for undermining the authority of the party.

However, in May 2021, the NPP announced the lifting of the suspension imposed on Kwabena Agyepong and thus restored his membership in the party.

He is now in the race to become the NPP’s presidential flagbearer for the 2024 election.