President John Mahama, who has just returned from his native home town, Bole, after casting his vote in the just ended district assembly elections, may have to be doing more of such trips if he is to avoid gargantuan embarrassment ahead of the 2016 polls.
Disturbing information reaching The aL-hAJJ reveals that unless the leadership of the ruling National Democratic Congress and in particular, President John Dramani Mahama, takes immediate steps to halt what many have described as “worrying developments in Bole” the President’s constituency may fall to the opposition New Patriotic Party in the 2016 general elections.
Reports are that some prominent Gonja chiefs unhappy with the president, are said to be behind ongoing subtle campaigns in Gonjaland, hopefully, to cause the defeat of the NDC and President Mahama in his home constituency Bole, to demonstrate their disaffection with the President.
Sources privy to this scheme disclosed to this paper that, what is also worsening the already not-too-good chances of the ruling party and President Mahama in his native Bole, is the apparent wrangling within the NDC party in Bole over who succeeds incumbent Member of Parliament, Alhaji Joseph Akati Saaka.
Reports suggest that some Chiefs in the Gonjaland, aside being unhappy with the President Mahama, (over reasons this paper would for now want to shelve) are also sharply divided over the ongoing infighting between two main aspiring parliamentary candidates of the NDC in the Bole constituency.
The November 7 parliamentary primaries of the ruling NDC, The aL-hAJJ’s intelligence reveals, has sparked a wave of heated and sometimes fierce contest between supporters of the Director of the Ghana Ambulance Service, Prof Ahmed Nuhu Zakaria and one Alhaji Issifu Suleiman, an official of EDAIF, who is also the self-acclaim heir to Alhaji Joseph Akati Saaka.
An overly disturbed party kingpin in the constituency, ahead of President Mahama’s recent visit home, told this paper “what is happening is tearing apart the party here. Already, the chiefs are unhappy with the President and they are working to cause his defeat here. They even want us (NDC) to lose the seat for the first time just to demonstrate their unhappiness about how things are going on here.” Among reasons for the seeming resentment of the people in the area, this paper’s intelligence has gathered, is the supposed neglect of the area by the ruling NDC government over the last six and half years.
Another influential party member in Bole (name withheld) also narrated, “I can tell you there is an ongoing secret plot to cause the President and NDC’s defeat here. These things are being instigated by some powerful persons and chiefs who, for reasons best known to them, say they are unhappy with the President.”
“What these chiefs have planned to do is that if the NDC loses Bole and even the President goes ahead to win the national elections, it would show that his (President Mahama) own people have rejected him…and that to me, is not good for us. Can you hazard a guess as to what people will say if Nana Addo should lose in Abuakwa South even whiles in opposition?” he quizzed.
According to the source, there are people moving around in the President’s constituency “brainwashing people that the president and the NDC has not done anything for Bole to warrant their votes in 2016. Some of them claim that Bole has produced vice president and now president and the same constituency has been voting NDC all these years, with little development, so 2016 is the opportune time to vent their anger on the NDC and President Mahama.”
The source added that “the unending feud between the two main aspiring parliamentary candidates of our party for the 2016 elections, Prof Ahmed Zakaria and Alhaji Issifu Suleiman, is not helping matters”.
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