Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is entitled to his opinion that his party would say “Thank you” to any member who decides to quit as a result of losing an internal election, Nii Noi Nortey, an independent parliamentary nominee for the Klottey Korle constituency, has said.

During the Greater Accra leg of his campaign tour, the NPP flag bearer said members who quit after losing internal polls were not loyal to the party.

"Our party selects leaders though internal elections. I, myself, was elected through such a process. True party people stay with the party whether they win or lose. My colleague Alan Kyerematen, who I beat in our primaries, is still here with me. He even speaks on my behalf. However, if you lose internal elections and you get disgruntled and decide to leave the party, then you are not a true NPP member. So, if you say you are quitting the party because you lost an election, we will say: 'Thank you very much for your services, you go, we will stay and fight the fight and make the way to bring the victory to the NPP.' We don't give up, we don't fret, come what may, we are solidly behind the Elephant," the three-time flag bearer told party members at a rally at Shiabu, Dansoman, in the Ablekuma West constituency on Tuesday, 4 October.

Following these comments, Mr Akufo-Addo has suffered some backlash from political observers including a political science lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr Edward Brenya.

Dr Brenya told Class News on Tuesday October 4: "He (Akufo-Addo) is already being questioned that he is not the type that can unify people. I don't think that whatever has happened with Afoko, Kwabena Agyapong and others should have happened if Nana Akufo-Addo, right from the beginning, had actually exercised a level of [commitment] to unify people. He would have been able to handle it. NPP is not the first party to have seen these kinds of things that emerged but what have we seen? ...Other people were sacked in constituencies and it is going on and on. Now we have people that are going independent and the only thing you can tell them is 'thank you because you are not patriotic'? What kind of leadership is that? ... He needs to look at the human side of issues and remember that winning elections is about numbers and you do everything that it takes to get the numbers to support you.”

But speaking in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Wednesday, 5 October, Nii Noi Nortey, who broke away from the NPP after losing a fiercely fought parliamentary primary, said: “All I can say is that he has made his point and, out of respect, we accept the comment he made. We are focused on the task ahead of us to transform the lives of the people of Klottey Korle. We are not looking at presidential issues, our fight is mainly the parliamentary election and so if he has spoken these words, we will accept and thank him for at least adding his voice to this matter. When I say ‘we’, I mean my campaign team. We are focused and poised to win the seat.”

"As for the issue of disappointment, we felt disappointed in the way issues were handled that led to this situation but we have moved on. We felt things were not handled the right way but we have moved on because we have only a few months to the elections. Honestly speaking, on my side, I felt the leadership of the party, not Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo alone, but the leadership and the management of the party in my case, was unfair….”

"I respect Nana Akufo-Addo a lot because he is a presidential candidate for the NPP. We have worked with him before but the point is some persons who purport to be loyal members of the party sued the party in court when they felt dissatisfied with the result of the primaries. Aren’t those people rather disloyal to the party? So, such a person and those of us, the independent candidates, who are more loyal to the party?

“People are entitled to give it any description but my loyalty is to the people of Klottey Korle and nobody else."