Former Press Secretary to President Kufuor and New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential aspirant, Kwabena Agyei Agyapong, has rubbished all opinion polls including the recent one purportedly carried out by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) on who is likely to win the party’s presidential slot.

From the very early months of this year, there have been several polls carried out by so many agencies, which different polls claims this or that aspirant is leading the pack of presidential hopefuls as the party prepares for its congress starting December 22, 2007 to pick a candidate to lead it to ‘war’ in the 2008 general elections. And not in any or all of those polls is Kwabena Agyapong mentioned as a serious contender let alone leading the pack of eighteen aspirants.

He has thus branded all those polls as the works of lazy people. According to the tough-talking aspirant, he would not waste his time mulling over the countless opinion polls on the chances of the various aspirants, since the so-called pollsters of all those reports only sit in Accra, and conduct surveys that are not representative of the population of party delegates across the length and breadth of the country.

Speaking to the Independent newspaper yesterday on the purported BNI report, which put him nowhere among the leading contenders, and even went on to suggest that, “he is a young politician full of ambition, but has a small bony chest,” Mr. Agyepong stated categorically that, he does not care about any BNI report. Speaking in a way that clearly portrayed his disregard for the so-called BNI report, Mr. Agyepong was forthright in pointing out that, rather than waste his time on meaningless polls, he prefers to focus on his campaign, which he knows is going on successfully.

Speaking in the affirmative, Mr. Agyapong pointed out that he is not the least perturbed by the BNI report, since that cannot replace the views and preferences of the numerous NPP delegates, who will make the life-changing decision on the D-Day. The party delegates, not the BNI, will decide on the floor of the congress, he stated confidently. Casting further doubts on all opinion polls conducted so far, the former presidential spokesperson dared all pollsters to produce even three items on the questionnaires they claim they distribute to potential delegates to fill in all the 230 constituencies.

That is the material they used to collect data, upon which they are making those claims, isn’t it, he queried, so let them publish that too for all to see, he dared them. He suggested that a good number of the potential aspirants get annoyed anytime they hear of these supposed opinion polls, because it is not a true reflection of what is on the ground. According to him, his is confident of winning because he has worked very hard in the constituencies, and that the delegates are buying his message. He added that, he is not going to indulge in any lazy politics based on lazy polls conducted by lazy pollsters.

The supposed BNI report, which is being serialized by the Ghanaian Observer newspaper, puts former Foreign Minister, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo in the lead. The survey further stated about Kwabena Agyapong: Even though the party faithful and most especially the leadership of the party know him, he is seen as politically immature”. It adds, his detractors describe him as arrogant and someone who would make an insignificant impact come the party’s presidential primary.