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The Tamale Metropolis was brought to a standstill on Wednesday, when the 2012 Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, arrived in the city to a rousing welcome from inhabitants of the city who escorted Dr. Bawumia from the outskirts of the city to the Zoegbeli Park where he addressed a mammoth rally. Arriving in the Northern Region from his eight (8) day tour of Brong Ahafo, Dr. Bawumia first paid courtesy calls on the chiefs of Yapei and Kusawgu where he sought their support and prayers for the task ahead. Dr. Bawumia then stopped at Sankpagla where he addressed a community durbar of the chiefs and people. However, even before Dr. Bawumia could finish addressing the people of Sankpagla, over 400 motor cyclists from the Tamale metropolis who could no longer wait to see the Vice-Presidential candidate of the NPP descended on Sankpagla to escort Dr. Bawumia to Tamale. The highway from Sankpagla to Tamale was immediately taken over by onlookers and crowds who all wanted to catch a glimpse of Dr. Bawumia and joined the escorting party to the Tamale Metropolis. Passengers in vehicles moving toward Tamale readily joined the thousands of escorts, cheering and waving as the convoy moved slowly into the Tamale City. The situation in the Tamale metropolis when the team finally arrived, after almost an hour of slow procession, was even more exciting as thousands of people and even more cyclists joined the spectacle making the procession to the Zoegbeli Park even slower. Not even the dawn of darkness could convince the over 5,000 people and cyclists who were escorting Dr. Bawumia of the need to hasten the pace of the procession. It took Dr. Bawumia and his team another two hours of procession to get to the rally grounds from the entrance into the city as men and women of all ages and children lined the streets in their numbers to cheer the man poised to become Ghana�s Vice-President come January 7th 2013 with chants of �Change Is Here�, �Free Education� and �We are Moving Forward� dominating. The size of the crowd escorting Dr. Bawumia meant that for over two hours, all activities on the roads, pavements and adjoining areas used by the convoy had to cease.