Stephen Ayesu Ntim
The National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Stephen Ayesu Ntim, has demanded of party members and supporters to consider what will be in the interest of the grouping even as he put it “we must sacrifice our personal and individual interests.”
Speaking during the launch of a commemorative book on the late Baffour Osei Akoto last Wednesday, he said that “it is in the general interest and progress of the Party that our individual and collective welfare may be found.”
Some matters, he noted, can be resolved amicably “if we prioritise the collective good of the Party and its goals. The need for amicable solutions to our challenges in the Party is more crucial now than ever, given the herculean task of our commitment to breaking the eight.”
According to Mr. Ntim, the NPP can best break the eight “if we bear each other’s burden, forgive each other when we are offended, and work diligently to support the government’s efforts to ameliorate the plights of the Ghanaian people and get them to appreciate the immense progress being made in the country under this government.”
Looking at the bigger picture, he said that there are enormous examples of selflessness, patriotism and vision that Okyeame Baffour Akoto and many of our forebears exhibited, which he added “we are happy celebrating Baffour Akoto’s memory today.”
During their time in the pre and immediate post-independence era, he recalled “the political situation in Ghana was quite stormy. Those days one could be cast into prison without knowing their offence, courtesy of the notorious Preventive Detention Act. People like Baffour Akoto could have remained comfortably in the palace and let the politicians do their so-called dirty politics. He instead chose the more challenging option of helping to salvage the situation to secure true democracy for the nation.”
The philosophy and principles that Baffour Akoto, JB Danquah, SD Dombo, KA Busia, and several others of our tradition espoused, he went on, have now become the foundation of our democratic society, which have been deepened by the tremendous leadership of JA Kufuor and which are being continued by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as presidents of the Republic.
The memory of people like Baffour Akoto must be a lighthouse that beckons us to navigate towards patriotism for national development, he said.
By A.R. Gomda