Mustapha Hamid, Spokesperson of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential Candidate Nana Akufo-Addo, has dismissed a claim by veteran journalist, Alhaji Harruna Attah that his boss [Akufo-Addo] is an ethnocentric politician who once told him [Attah] that the NPP was not going to cede its leadership to a non-Akan. 

According to him, the claim is an attempt to turn the heat on the NPP after President John Mahama received public bashing for his ethnocentric comments while on the campaign in the Upper East and Upper West regions last week because if there is any "unrepentant ethnocentric bigot" in this election, there is no doubt that it is President John Mahama.

President Mahama has received a lot of criticisms after claiming over the weekend that the NPP was an anti-Northerner party which does not see Northerners as fit to assume any top leadership role within their party and therefore warned Vice Presidential Candidate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia that just like the late vice President Aliu Mahama was frustrated with the contest of 16 other candidates when he tried to succeed former President John Kufuor in 2007, so will he be stopped if he tried to become a flagbearer of the NPP.

READ ALSO: NPP won't allow you to be flagbearer - Mahama to Bawumia

Harruna Attah, a former NPP member and Editor of the Akufo-Addo owned Statesman Newspaper but now an NDC member and Ghana's ambassador to Namibia, in defence of President Mahama, wrote an article on Wednesday the President had done nothing wrong but "was only stating an obvious and historical fact known to many people with a sound knowledge of Ghana’s politics since Independence".

In his article, he stated that that per his interactions with Nana Akufo-Addo, the NPP candidate was more ethnocentric than what President Mahama said.

 “I do recollect very clearly, as if it happened only yesterday, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo invited me to his office at Ridge near the offices of the Electoral Commission. I honoured the invitation, not knowing what to expect. The outcome was one of the most revealing encounters I have ever had with a Ghanaian politician. He raised a number of issues and concluded on my “support” for the late Vice President. On that, this is what he told me,” 

“The words have been indelibly etched on my conscience: “Harruna, your support for Aliu was flawed. If you think our party will cede its Akan leadership, you are wrong.” He went on to expatiate on the theme, but with my mind reeling at this blatant and brazen ethnocentricity, nothing else really mattered to me again. When I left, I confided in a few people, mainly family and friends, as witnesses. I received all manner of suggestions on how to handle this “bombshell” and indeed one family member high up in the NPP even suggested that I take it up with President Kufuor. The frightening fundamental message was clear: No non-Akan should dream of leading the NPP as Presidential Candidate.”

READ ALSO: Mahama is right; Nana Addo told me in 2008 that NPP won't cede its Akan leadership - Attah

NPP Presidential Candidate Nana Akufo-Addo’s virulent opposition to an Aliu Presidency was so intense that he once openly tongue lashed me at a dinner party where the host had to come to my defence and his daughter even asked me what I had done to her father…Ironically she asked: “Are you NDC?"

"I received all manner of suggestions on how to handle this “bombshell” and indeed one family member high up in the NPP even suggested that I take it up with President Kufuor". "The frightening fundamental message was clear: No non-Akan should dream of leading the NPP as Presidential Candidate", he wrote in his article.

But in an interview on Joy FM's Super Show on Thursday, Mr Hamid said the article was a fabrication, describing it as an insult to the intelligence of Ghanaians.

Stressing that, "no such conversation has taken place and that is a simple fact", he explained that it does not make sense that Akufo-Addo who had an election to win in 2008 would make comments that could divide his own party and scuttle his chances of becoming president.

This, he said, is a "height of foolhardiness" which an experienced diplomat like Akufo-Addo can never do and Harruna Attah of all people ought to know that about him.

"Mahama never contested presidential primaries in his life...but he is president by virtue of someone choosing him as a vice" so Akufo-Addo would not choose a Northerner (Dr Mahamudu Bawumia) as his running-mate and still hold the view that a Northerner in the NPP cannot be president.

According to him, the article betrays the panic mindset of the governing NDC which is now apprehensive about its chances in the 2016 general elections.

 

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