Help break eight-year election jinx - John Boadu urges delegates in Upper East

The General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr John Boadu, has charged the rank and file of the party in the Upper East Region to help break the eight-year election jinx in 2024.

He also urged them to find solutions to the poor performance of the party at the parliamentary level in the region.

Addressing hundreds of delegates at the Regional Annual Conference of the party in Bolgatanga last Sunday, Mr Boadu expressed regret that the party had never gone beyond winning four parliamentary seats in the region since 1992.

Giving the breakdown, he said in 2008, the party had four seats, in 2012 it had one seat, in 2016 it got three seats but in 2020, it dropped to only one seat which he described as not encouraging, hence something urgent needed to be done about the situation.

The conference was on the theme, “Reflect to break the 8”

Delegates deliberated the state of the party and made some recommendations for consideration by the National Annual Delegates Conference to be held later in the Ashanti Region.

Remittance

Mr Boadu suggested to delegates that “it was time a resolution was passed on the need for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) and other government appointees to regularly and periodically remit their respective party constituencies and there is no party anywhere in the world where government appointees do not remit their constituencies, regional and national party regularly and periodically”.

He further called on them to “use this conference to take a decision and get that conversation ratified at the National Delegates Conference so that government appointees, ministers of state and MMDCEs should at least donate a token of their resources towards party activities".

Mr Boadu was of the conviction that such a decision or resolution would ultimately take a huge burden off the party at the national level in terms of funding party activities at the grass roots including organising regional and constituency delegates conferences.

Regional minister

The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Stephen Yakubu, stated that the region had a very difficult task of increasing votes because over the years, the voting pattern in the region had not been encouraging.

He assured national party executive members that the region would do its best to break the eight-year jinx and increase the parliamentary seats in 2024.