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Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished Guests,
Regional Party Executives,
Our Regional Youth Organizer,
Former and Current Leaders of the TEIN fraternity from campuses across the Greater Accra Region and beyond,
Members of TEIN,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Akatamanso family,
Our media friends,
all protocols duly observed.
I am happy to be here, and very happy to witness in you the energy that will birth the victory of our party come December 2024. I bring you greetings from the Greater Accra Regional Council of Elders. I bring you compliments of goodwill from the leadership of our great party in the region. I also bring you fraternal greetings from our National Executives and the Flag-bearer of our Party, His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama, the President-in-waiting.
It is a great honour to be speaking at this august gathering of one of the important wings of our party. The Tertiary Education Institutions Network (TEIN) of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to which most of you here are or were once associated, remains a major pillar in our party’s mobilization, recruitment and political inclusion processes.
Permit me to commend the organizers of this program. In itself, this event is a demonstration of your resolve and commitment to work restlessly for our party to ensure the victory on December 7, 2024.
Comrades and friends make no mistake, the NDC shall win and must win the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections. But there is no room for complacency. The times demand that we leave no stone unturned till His Excellency John Dramani Mahama is sworn-in again as President of the Republic of Ghana come January 7, 2025.
Let me also take the opportunity to express our party’s deepest gratitude to the lecturers and staff of the various educational institutions who serve as patrons and mentors for TEIN members. Undoubtedly, we are fully aware of their selfless dedication, risks, and sacrifices, and I can assure you, your efforts and contribution in our 2024 campaigns will not go unnoticed. The times demand more sacrifices and dedication from each and every one of you, because with the victory comes the fruits of good governance and opportunities to fulfill our individual and collective aspirations.
As you are already aware, the 2024 election is a national exercise to liberate our country from a group of callous, clueless, and deceitful gang who rose to power on lies, propaganda, and deliberate misinformation. We have a duty to liberate Ghana from the hands of an obvious dangerous gang that have imposed a phenomenon of state capture on our country.
Comrades, as you know there is massive disappointment across the country. Nana Addo and Buwumia, who bear the title “Excellencies” have taught us that elections have consequences. As we speak, the one district one factory is now a mirage, the one village one dam is now a delusion, the one constituency one million dollars is now a scam, and the Free Senior High School policy is now a caricature of education.
In the name of offering Senior High Education for free, Nana Addo and Bawumia have reduced our second cycle education into concentration camps where young Ghanaians in their prime or formative years, are forced to live in congestion, hunger, and deprivation due to lack of thorough analysis prior to the implementation of the, otherwise, good policy. It is one thing having a good idea and an entirely different thing implementing it properly!
Even more worrying is the pervasive state of trepidation in which teachers, school administrators, parents, and students in secondary schools across the country have been muzzled, and for fear of anyone’s guess, many have embraced a new culture of silence.
Comrades, and Friends, Nana Akuffo Addo, Bawumia and the NPP promised to expand the frontiers of freedom and liberty in this country, however, upon assumption of office, they targeted and closed down radio stations perceived to support the course of the NDC. Innocent Ghanaians who dare to speak or investigate acts of corruption under the NPP government have met their untimely death as has been the case of Ahmed Suale; and others like Manasseh Azure who was forced into temporal exile.
Officials of state institutions that mustered the courage to point out wrong-doing under the Nana Akuffo Addo and Bawumia government have been shown the exit and silenced. When Martin Amidu tried to carry out his duties as Special Prosecutor appointed by President Nana Addo himself, he was not only frustrated, he was also forced to resign to save his life and reputation. Mr. Daniel Domelevo was chased out of office as Auditor-General under bizarre circumstances that leave horrifying dents on the reputation of our democracy. Our reputable judicial system pronounced judgment in Domelevo’s favor when he had already suffered an irreversible injustice from the highest office of the land. Indeed justice delayed is Justice denied!
While at it, we must never forget that it is the NPP under Nana Addo and Bawumia that our tax money was used to close down banks and other financial institutions without any consideration for the inherent lose of jobs, and unemployment implications of such a callous act. Now we know that the cost of such bank closures has been more than the amount required to recapitalize the banks in order to secure the employment of our fellow citizens and possibly allow the state to take equity in affected banks.
Comrades, and friends, our tax money was weaponized, and used to kill the hopes, dreams and aspirations of thousands of hardworking and decent Ghanaians who were directly and indirectly affected by the recklessness of the NPP government and the Bank of Ghana. Out of the collapse of the banks some lives have been lost, others have been pushed into hunger, others have been plunged into abject poverty.
Colleagues, it goes without saying that under the Nana Addo and Bawumia government, our collective well-being has been sacrificed on the altar of greed, political vindictiveness, nepotism, cronyism, and what is obviously looting of national resources through an orchestrated daylight robbery, where over GHC21 billion has been used to collapse Commercial Banks and other financial institutions which otherwise required less than GHC10 billion to sustain businesses, maintain thousands of jobs with opportunities for thousands of new recruitments.
Comrades and Friends, a report on Ghana’s Economic Outlook published by the World Bank in June this year noted that “Currency depreciation, increased price of electricity and water, and an increase in the VAT have driven up the cost of living, particularly for food” and suggests further that in 2022 the Akuffo Addo and Buwumia government pushed about 850, 000 Ghanaians “into poverty due to rising prices and the loss in purchasing power” and “the food security situation in the country is believed to have worsened considerably”.
My Brother and Sister, the NPP has become synonymous to mismanagement, and corruption-riddled scandals in Ghana. Many have lost track of the count of the scandals and corruption-related practices; but how can we forget the thievery through PDS, the Australia Visa Scandal, the disappearance of 12 million dollars-worth of fertilizers, Kelni GVG saga, Sputnik V deal, the 800,000 cedis allocated for design of a website, the National Cathedral scandal, the questionable payments to Kroll & Associates, PPA insider dealings, the drama surrounding the controlling of Galamsey, the $12 million Oslo consulate deal, and the unfolding story of Cecilia Dapaah – the “Empress”, among several others.
Nothing is more worrying and threatening of our collective well-being than the obvious escalation in the prices of basic goods and services in our country. The government that has impoverished us, is also the one that is mismanaging our economy. Under the current circumstances, we cannot hope for the creation of any decent jobs nor for life-transforming wages unless and until we kick out the clueless government from power and return Ghana to the safe hands of John Dramani Mahama.
My friends, we are in this together, and you the members and former leaders of TEIN, have a greater role to play. This country and its future belong to those of you who share in the dream of building the Ghana We Want. A Ghana in which we work together and succeed together.
The party we belong to—the NDC—holds the view that all humans are equal, yet recognizes that we have individual dreams and aspirations in life so we aim to support everyone to achieve his or her dreams through policies that provide level playing field for all. This is why our policies are often engineered to ensure everyone feels a sense of belonging irrespective of one’s socio-economic, ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds.
Comrades and friends, dare not forget that as the youth, you are the heirs of the revolution that birthed our current democratic dispensation, and so you are obliged to join the fight to rescue our country from the forces that seek to undermine the institutions upon which our systems of governance are anchored.
As we face the 2024 elections, the NDC shall need your knowledge as youth leaders from our tertiary educational institutions; our party shall need your expertise and your creativity; and it shall depend on your steadfastness and selfless sacrifices. Your sweat and toil in the struggle ahead will be the fuel that will power our energies to victory, and so our party expects nothing less from you but a loyal commitment to President John Mahama’s vision to build the Ghana We Want, where prosperity shall be for all, not a few.
Our student fronts have always played crucial and critical roles in the electoral victory of the NDC in previous years, and it is therefore the general expectation that many of you, our youth, will soon move into communities to explain our party’s past record of consistent transformation and achievements from the time of President Jerry John Rawlings, through the period of President John Evans Atta Mills, and of course to our recent recollections of the outstanding performance of President John Dramani Mahama, especially to your peers, and canvass support for our forward march to wrest power from the NPP in 2024.
Comrades, no party can win an election just by merely believing it will win. So, we must demonstrate through action that we really want to win. It requires that every one of you gets out of his or her comfort zone, educate our fellow citizens on the achievements of President John Mahama and his vision for the next four years.
So, if you ask me what role you can play in securing victory for the NDC in 2024, I will urge all of you to actively get involved in the campaigns in your places and spheres of influence with President John Mahama’s message of rescuing, reviving, restoring and rebuilding the ‘Ghana We Want’.
My dear TEIN members, the NDC wants to hear of you in the villages, in the city centers, the towns, in the hostels, the churches, the mosques, the farms, in the schools, at the lorry stations, in the villages, in the media, and in the trenches. Get on to the various social media platforms and promote the values and ideals of our party. Organize events in your neighborhood to educate and inform the public. Let Ghanaians know that the clouds of despair and frustration that have been hovering over our nation is in transit, and that there is hope in the horizon.
Comrades, today I address you as former TEIN members and leaders, but I also see in you our future Ministers, parliamentarians, Chief Executives, District Chief Executives, among others who will carry the touch of progressive leadership forward in our common goal of working to build the Ghana We Want. Make no mistake, your work for the NDC today would be the testimony for the responsibilities that will be entrusted to you tomorrow.
My Friends, at this point, I am urging all of you to carefully study trends in our national elections and use the insights gained from the data to inform your activism and mobilization for our party. To be well informed is to be well armed in the struggle ahead. We have learned for instance that rejected ballots have been instrumental in shaping the electoral fortunes of our adversaries in some traditional NDC constituencies. We have also learned that ballot accounting and vigilance are critical talents required into the next general elections.
So, it is more likely, that we will save many potential rejected ballots to our side if you take up the responsibility to educate the masses about the simple procedure and processes of handling ballot papers. More specifically, I wish to encourage you to use the skills you have acquired in research to analyze the patterns and trends, and device strategies to optimize our efforts for victory in December 2024.
Comrades, let me end by saying that we are aware that the NPP has been investing in how to win the 2024 elections without necessarily winning majority of the votes. Tell them that we are aware of their machinations; and trust me, we will and we shall deploy every strategy, tactic, effort, and energy to meet them squarely; and I can assure you that the NPP will be defeated in December 2024, and the NDC will be returned to power to rebuild the Ghana We Want.
I thank you all for your attention.
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