The NPP youth
A youth group in the Odododiodoo Constituency of the Greater Accra Region by name ‘Youth for Accountability,’ Monday morning besieged the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) in a bid to prevent the swearing-in of some newly appointed assembly members.
According to the group, which said it works to ensure accountability within the public service, some of the newly appointed AMA members do not mean well for the government and therefore do not deserve to be appointees.
“We know some of them worked against the current government during the campaign season so we don’t see why they should be appointed members of the AMA after the political party they worked against has been elected into power,” Nii Mantse, second convener of the group, said.
Explaining what happened at the AMA to DAILY GUIDE, Nii Mantse said about 200 members of the group went to the AMA office to present a petition against the swearing-in of two appointed members, following a tip-off about their appointment to the assembly.
“We went there peacefully to present our petition to the chief director to suspend the swearing-in of two appointees, one of who is serving a suspension directive at the party level,” he added.
The constituency chairman, Raymond Ntoana, who was suspended for irreconcilable differences with the then parliamentary candidate, Nii Lamptey Barnaman during last year’s electioneering campaign, was one of the people the group opposed.
Nii Mantse said Ntoana’s name was not submitted to the NPP regional executives for consideration, only for members of Youth for Accountability to hear on Sunday that his name had been added to the list of appointees and would be sworn in on Monday.
Justifying why the group went to the AMA office Monday morning to stop the swearing-in, Nii Mantse said if the people who do not have the same ideology as the ruling government are politically appointed into public service, “this will send a wrong signal to the youth that they can be disloyal and get rewarded for it.”
The group also called for equal and fair representation of government appointees, indicating that the appointments should reflect the various tribes in the metropolis.
“Accra is now a metropolitan area with different groups of people so this should be reflected in the appointments,” he added. “I will remind the NPP elders that we have worked for the party to come to power and so they should appoint people who will work for the country and not those who will work against the progress of the nation,” he posited.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri