Growing up in a palace at Aburi-Akwapim offered me the unique opportunity of learning many things that have shaped me into not feeding into matters that I am not privy to proper information about.

Guided by those things that I learned in my early life, I hardly talk about people because I have heard others say things about them. And on things and people that I have a fair knowledge about, I speak about them dispassionately because of what I know about them.

One person that I can speak about without any fear of contradiction because of the times that I have shared with him is Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, New Patriotic Party (NPP) running mate for the 2024 Presidential elections.

I sometimes get sad, and at other times I just smile when other people go all out to give Dr. Prempeh, popularly called NAPO, a bad name just to butcher him over nothing.

I have known NAPO since September 2007, and what started as a journalist coming into contact with another person for the sole purpose of running stories on him has led us into becoming a family.

It was a meeting that lasted for less than thirty minutes at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Accra, which is today called Lancaster Hotel, and that meeting was for Dr. Prempeh to introduce himself to me as the potential New Patriotic Party (NPP) Parliamentary candidate for the Manhyia Constituency for the 2008 elections.

First impressions count, and NAPO gave me that idea of who he was, first by his perfect appearance and the aura around him. He wouldn’t even allow me to reorganize his presence by standing from my chair to exchange pleasantries with him, and he made me feel like he had known me for ages.

We connected after that meeting, and it became obvious that there was something unique about the man who eventually won the 2008 Parliamentary elections and became a Member of Parliament in 2009. It was clear that he was not in Parliament by default but had prepared himself to serve the people of Manhyia to the best of his ability, as there were sterling qualities about him that I noticed in his early days in Parliament.

Solid Human Relations

My earlier impression of Dr. Prempeh is how he relates to people, including those he was meeting for the first time. He would not stop checking on me consistently through text messages and phone calls and sometimes followed them with meetings that were meant to find out if things were okay.

There was no occasion that NAPO would not ask about how my family was doing, to the extent of asking about my folks in Aburi, although he has not met any of them. In all my dealings with Dr. Prempeh, one thing played out, and that was how he thinks about other people irrespective of their background. In the ensuing period of our relationship, I got to know that matters affecting the well-being of other people were so crucial to him.

NAPO has a soft heart for everyone and later explained to me that human beings exist because of other human beings and it would be debasing and unjust not to be there for the next person. In bad times, Dr. Prempeh would crack jokes that would let one forget about what is eating one up and go further to share his life experience that would motivate the next person.

NAPO’s Meticulousness

In my association and dealings with Dr. Prempeh, not once would he not ask questions during conversations to decipher the stuff that he was consuming, and if it was about documents, he would take his time and read them properly and follow up with questions.

He does not waste time on issues that have nothing to do with him and would not discuss things and matters that are not important to him. Dr. Prempeh could have conversations and copiously quote times, dates, and lines of old documents and occurrences with ease because he always comes to the table well-prepared.

Whenever Dr. Prempeh is not convinced about my position on some issues, he will not impose what he thinks on me; rather, he would ask that we regroup and digress and digest the issues further at a later date. The way he comes prepared would force me to do extensive reading and research into whatever was on our plate because he always raises superior arguments on things that we discuss.

Workaholic

I was confused when Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on winning the 2016 elections, decided to appoint Dr. Prempeh as the Minister of Education, and my anxiety was from the fact that the man was a medical doctor and was to be in charge of rolling out the government’s flagship programme, Free Senior School Education (Free SHS).

Unknown to me, NAPO was overly prepared for the task ahead to the extent that his office became his new home, and he was engaging stakeholders and players within the education sector on how to prosecute the agenda before him and succeed.

Every other occasion that I would share our morning pleasantries with him, he would send a signal that he was already in the office. At a point, I started getting worried over how Dr. Prempeh was working extremely hard, but he would pull the brakes on my way by explaining that there was work to be done and he must do it and do it well.

I wasn’t surprised to see Dr. Prempeh successfully roll out the Free SHS and become the best minister in the Akufo-Addo administration in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and left a unique legacy at that ministry. The numerous awards won by Dr. Prempeh indicate that other people and entities were watching his performance and were highly satisfied with his level of competence and versatility.

Moving him to the Energy Ministry after Nana Akufo-Addo won his second term was not much of a bother to me because I had no doubts in my mind that he would deliver, and he delivered and left solid footprints at the Energy Ministry too. From what I know, Dr. Prempeh is a team player who would rally people around him to offer the best solutions to problems that must be dealt with and hardly take excuses for failure.

Hate for Dishonesty

The NAPO that I know will make life and things uncomfortable for anyone around him who is dishonest and not straightforward. I remember asking him why he never became head of the entity tender committee of the ministries that he handled in one of our conversations, and his answer was terse. "Onua, my name is very important to me as it is the greatest property that I have in this world."

He would later explain to me that there were scheduled officers for tender and did not see why he should poke his nose into their work but would rather make sure things were done right. I later came to appreciate his position as various ‘clean-up exercises’ to find dirt on Dr. Prempeh and throw mud at him over the years have failed, and I can beat my chest and say that certain persons would go out of their way and say bad and hurtful things about Dr. Prempeh because he would not feed into their dishonest activities.

Conclusion

The NAPO that I know and have known since 2017 is akin to someone who carries charcoal because flies do not follow anyone who carries charcoal. The Dr. Prempeh that I know has never bathed with snow because anyone who takes snow to be water and bathes with it will have soap on his skin.

Anytime that the NAPO that I know is mentioned, the things that come to mind are his kindheartedness, his listening ears, hard work, competence, and versatility. The Napo that I know and dealt with over the years would not engage in dishonest acts and would not associate himself with crooked characters.

The Dr. Prempeh I know gets attacked by people who have no idea about who he is, but in everything, he stays focused as his other names are ‘Competent and Versatility’ and he has no time to begrudge anyone with the wrong perception about him.