Popular highlife musician, Lucky Mensah, has confirmed he has cut ties with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and released a campaign song which asks Ghanaians to vote for Nana Akufo Addo, presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), during the December 2016 polls.
“It is true I have released a song for the NPP 2016 campaign and it is my hope the party would like it and use it. I did the song for the NPP because it is very clear that the NDC government for the last eight years it has been in power has failed Ghanaians and the NPP has to take over leadership of this country because our conditions of living is getting worse by the day,” Lucky Mensah told NEWS-ONE.
He continued…“Times are hard and apart from the few people who are near the big people in government, the rest of us are suffering painfully. Businesses are suffering, the promise by President Mahama to build 200 schools across the country has turned out to be fake, the cost of doing business is so high no one can make any meaningful profit, taxes are too high for the average Ghanaian and electricity cost is too high and sometimes even higher than the cost of rent and I would be a hypocrite if I keep quiet and pretend things are all right. My song is to encourage Ghanaians to vote against hardship, vote against dumsor and vote against a government that does not care about the sufferings of Ghanaians.”
Lucky Mensah said apart from using his resources to produce the song, he would do all within his means to promote it and would gladly accept an invitation to join the NPP campaign even if it means going on the party’s platforms to wear NPP colours and openly endorse Nana Addo and the party’s message.
The song, ‘Munto Mma Nana Addo’ mentions the social mitigation achievements of the NPP, including the abolition of the ‘cash-and-carry’ systems in the hospitals and replacing it with a free national health service, provision of free maternal healthcare, a free transportation system and the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) which created jobs for some 50,000 youthful Ghanaians.
In 2008, Lucky Mensah sang the famous ‘Come Back To NDC’ track for the NDC, and it became one of the party’s official campaign songs.
Four years later, he released that controversial ‘Nkratuo’ song, a satiric song which sends a message through one ‘Tawiah’ to tell his big brother ‘Atta’ that things are not going well and that the situation has gone very bad
The song was perceived to be a direct message from Lucky Mensah to the then President Atta Mills that his government was failing and things were not going well in the country.
But even before the NPP could gain some political currency from ‘Nkratuo’, the music right of the song was bought by an NDC businessman.
Lucky Mensah, even by then, did not hide his feelings that the NDC government was driving Ghana in the wrong direction.
By Halifax Ansah-Addo