Dr. Bryan Acheampong
Dr. Bryan Acheampong, a contender in the New Patriotic Party’s flagbearer primary, has called on party members to rally behind Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia ahead of the 2028 elections.
Dr. Acheampong’s appeal, follows recent remarks by fellow contestant Kennedy Ohene Agyapong threatening to disrupt party activities.
“I speak to you today not as a bystander to our recent contest, but as one who stood in it,” Dr. Acheampong said. “Like Hon. Kennedy Agyapong, I offered myself to our delegates in the January primary, and like him, I did not emerge the winner. I, therefore, understand, perhaps better than most, the weight of disappointment that follows a hard-fought campaign.”
He said the NPP’s most important task before 2028 is to rebuild, reunite, and return to power adding that, “Nothing — no grievance, no provocation, no personal quarrel — can be allowed to stand above that mission.”
Daily infighting, he warned, only hands an advantage to the party’s opponents.
Addressing Mr. Agyapong’s recent threats and the tensions they sparked, Dr. Acheampong urged him to “lower the temperature” and use his influence for “healing rather than division.”
He acknowledged that “a few voices” around the flagbearer’s camp and even his own campaign directed disrespect and insults at Mr. Agyapong during and after the contest adding that many wished the party’s elders had acted faster to restrain them.
“There is no evidence that Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia commissioned, directed or endorsed those attacks. The individuals responsible carry their own long-standing grievances with Mr. Agyapong,” he said.
He noted that harsh words were spoken on all sides in the heat of the contest, including by Mr. Agyapong himself, but argued they were “spoken in the passion of the moment rather than from the heart.”
“This is about Dr. Bawumia and the NPP and not about the handful of individuals with their own scores to settle,” Dr. Acheampong said.
“Dr. Bawumia is now the candidate of all of us. He carries the mandate not only of those who voted for him, but of every member who voted for Ken, for me, and for the others who contested,” he added.
He thus appealed to Mr. Agyapong and his supporters to, “lay down the weapons of internal warfare and to close ranks behind our flagbearer so that in 2028 we restore the New Patriotic Party to the service of the people of Ghana.”
A Daily Guide Report