General Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie has been explaining why there was no official representation from the party during celebrations of the 54th Independence Day Anniversary on Sunday, 6th March.

He said the NPP failed to attend the ceremony because of the late arrival of invitation to the programme. According to him, as at 5pm on Friday, March 4, the NPP had not received any invite from the NDC government to attend the celebration.

Speaking in an interview with Peace FM News, Sir John explained that the NPP would have gladly turned up for the occasion had the party received the invitation on time. According to him, the invitation was delivered to the NPP’s Head Office when he had left for Kumasi and Nana Addo was already at the airport embarking on a trip outside the country.

“I am not sure the NDC government started planning the anniversary on Friday so if they indeed wanted to invite us, they would have included us in their planning earlier…If you want to invite someone to a programme, you do it on time; but this time because they didn’t want us to be part (of the celebration at the Independence Square), they brought the invitation around 6 pm when myself and Nana Addo were not around…Chairman of the party, Jake is also sick so he couldn’t have attended…and they was not enough time to appoint someone else to represent the party,” he explained.

He said it would have been better if no invitation was thrown the NPP’s way since it was virtually impossible for the party to honour it in view of the late delivery of the invite from the State Protocol. He opined that the NDC intentionally delivered the invitation very late, with the knowledge that the NPP might not attend so they can use their lack of presence for propaganda purposes.

“….the NDC did not treat the NPP fairly…the NDC is bent on bent on promoting disunity among Ghanaians…but the NPP, being good citizens, would not have ignored a genuine invitation to attend such a ceremony,” he added.

The NPP General Secretary added that the ruling NDC government has missed out on another glorious opportunity to unify those of diverse political groupings by this act.