Mr Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament has partly attributed the electoral defeat of the National Democratic Congress in 2016 to President Mahama who allegedly surrounded himself with political greenhorns.

He said: A sheep had led a pride of NDC lions into defeat because the President had surrounded himself with disrespectful political greenhorns who insulted everybody and cut him off from the leadership of the party.”

Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Ghana News Agency after making some allegations on an Accra-based Radio station, the Nadowli/Kaleo Legislator likened former President John Dramani Mahama to a sheep that had led a pride of lions to a crushing defeat in the 2016 general election.

“I am sure you know – ‘when a sheep leads lions into battle, they will be defeated, but when a lion leads sheep into battle, they win’,” Mr Bagbin said in an exclusive interview with the Ghana News Agency.

“Former President Mahama had led the country without the party. The evidence is clear, even our respected founder who is revered even by our opponents was eventually estranged from his own baby. Ask yourself, what could ever make a mother abandon her own child? It should tell you that President Rawlings was really pushed away,” Mr Bagbin said.

He said the NDC failed woefully in power under Mahama because the government which had abandoned the party, had also abandoned the pillars of politics.

The pillars of politics, he said included; the media, technocrats and the party itself as the mother ship that were woefully abandoned to their fate.

“As a party, we have been so unfair to our own media. My heart bleeds that we had been in power for eight years and it was under our reign that our own newspapers, such as The Enquirer and the Palaver collapsed.

“Today, where is The Republic, where is The Ghanaians Voice? Even Montie is struggling to come back on air. We were in power for eight years and we did nothing to build our own mouthpiece. But in modern day politics, the media is everything because every political party has good plans and works hard to achieve them; but while on it the people must see the genuine efforts even if results are hard to come by. Without the media, how do you get the people to appreciate your effort?”

Mr Bagbin said, one of the woes of the NDC was because it allowed the NPP to capture and control the media landscape and that it was even more in their alleged disappointing performance.

“It is not that we do not have technocrats in the NDC, we have, but the NPP attracts more. And even the ones that we have, we are pushing them away because we think politics is a matter of charity.”

Mr Bagbin said the party should change the mind-set of their faithful as the solution to the myriad mistakes that made the party unpopular in 2016 polls.

“We must first and foremost be clear in our minds that politics is not only about sacrifice; people who sacrifice must benefit when the opportunities come around. Therefore we must build our media, empower them also to become empires like our opponents have done with theirs. We must put in place measures for technocrats to feel welcomed in our party and we must make our own party sustainable in these turbulent seas called politics.

“We must also not forget our grassroots; you are an ingrate to ride on their support and sacrifices into office and then when you get there you abandon them and say you are father for all,” he added.

He said efforts were underway to put the party back on a winsome footing and that could be achieved only when the party hierarch respected the recommendations of the Professor Kwesi Botchwey recommendations.