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The Northern regional branch of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has resolved to win all the 31 parliamentary seats in the Northern Region in the 2016 general election.

The party is also determined to win back  the 11 parliamentary seats it lost in the  2012 general election in the region due to internal party disagreements and petty squabbles.

Currently, the NDC holds 20 parliamentary seats out of the 31 seats in the region, while the New Patriotic Party (NPP) holds 10 seats and the Convention People's Party (CPP) one.

The Northern Regional Secretary of the party, Mr Halid Abdul-Rauf, disclosed this in an interview with the Daily Graphic at an orientation workshop organised by the regional secretariat of the party for constituency executives in the region in Tamale last Saturday.

Orientation workshop
 The orientation workshop was aimed at educating the constituency executive on the command structure, constitution, philosophy and history of the party in order to avoid some of the unnecessary internal disagreements and petty squabbles  that affect the fortunes of the party ahead of every general election.

 Mr Abdul-Rauf said the orientation workshop formed part of the strategies put in place by the party to help achieve its target of winning all the 31 constituency seats in the region in the 2016 general election.

 According to him, internal party disagreements and bickering made the party lose some of the parliamentary seats in the region in the last election so they had devised strategies  to avoid such distractions ahead of the 2016 general election.

 He said the orientation workshop was also to set the tone for successful parliamentary primaries for the party in the region to enable the party to emerge as a united and stronger party to achieve its target and retain power in the 2016 elections.

Assertion debunked
 Mr Abdul-Rauf debunked the assertion that the party was organising  the orientation workshops  in order to avoid  similar internal party wrangling and confusion that had rocked the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in recent times leading to the demise of the party's Upper East Regional Chairman.

The NDC Northern Regional Secretary said the party had put into motion its outreach programmes well ahead to manage its internal affairs towards successful parliamentary and presidential primaries and that the orientation workshop for the constituency executive was not coming on the heels of the internal wrangling and confusion in the NPP.

" The NDC is a party of rules and regulations and not about personalities. Therefore, there is the need to periodically hold such orientation workshops for party executives right from the branch level to the constituency, regional and national to know what the party stands for and to come up with formidable electioneering machinery  for every general election," he stated.

Mr Abdul-Rauf added that series of workshops had been organised at the national level for the regional executive and it was the turn of the constituency executives. The exercise, he said, would be extended to the branch level to enable the rank and file of the party to appreciate and understand the command structure, philosophy, constitution and the history of the party.