By William
Yaw Owusu
Thursday
August 30, 2018
Two gurus of the opposition National Democratic
Congress (NDC), who are vying for a top post in the party, are at each other’s
throat.
Koku Anyidoho, who is the NDC’s Deputy General
Secretary in charge of Operations, is busily campaigning to unseat his boss,
Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, the substantive General Secretary and the ‘dog fight’
has intensified.
Koku’s
Pressure
Mr Asiedu Nketia, popularly called General Mosquito,
for the first time since he became General Secretary, is facing stiff
competition from Koku, who has vowed to snatch the post from him.
The ‘fight’ started somewhere in October 2017, when
Koku was quoted by various media outlets as saying that his boss Mr. Asiedu
Nketia had ‘blessed’ him to go for the post because he would not seek
re-election when nominations open.
An Accra-based private station, Rainbow Radio, then published that the NDC General Secretary had
asked Koku to abandon his plans to contest him suggesting that General Mosquito
has had a change of mind.
Sending
Emissaries
Mr. Asiedu Nketia was even reported to have sent
some emissaries to Koku to persuade him to step down.
According to Rainbow
Radio, he (Asiedu Nketia) had ‘admitted’ that he told Koku to contest
because he was no longer interested in the post.
In the ensuing heat Koku, in interviews, appear to
confirm reports that Mr. Asiedu Nketia initially told him to go for the post
but later made a U-turn.
Koku cannot be ‘bought’ b anyone in the party and
vowed not to abandon his dreams of becoming the General Secretary.
Nomination
Forms
After picking his nomination forms last week for the
contest, Koku again said he would help to unseat what he called “the
incompetent New Patriotic Party (NPP) under the leadership of President
Akufo-Addo, who has failed woefully in fulfilling his campaign promises in
2020.
Using innuendos, Koku said he is not ‘scared’ of any
candidate vying for the General Secretary position.
He said “the race is not about insults, it’s not
boxing; we are not in the race to insult anybody. I have decided to contest as
General Secretary with the message of party first. The party is supreme and we
must work for the party at all levels in order to rebuild it and bring it back
to power in 2020.”
Mosquito
Bite
Mr. Asiedu Nketia, who appears to have enough of
Koku’s tantrums, reacted by ‘exposing’ his subordinate for peddling ‘falsehood’
about him.
He said, “I saw a headline on one of the portals
that I have pleaded with Koku Anyidoho to step down for me to go unopposed. I
called that radio station, Rainbow Radio,
and asked them where they got that story and also expressed my reservations
about it since the headline and body of the story did not match. They gave me
the opportunity to give my side of the story.”
“I explained to them that it was rather Koku
Anyidoho who asked some prominent people in the NDC to come to my house to
apologise to me for indicating that I have blessed him for the General
Secretary position because that was not true. Koku Anyidoho rather came to
apologise to me not the other way round.
“He sent Dr Carl Max, Hon. Kofi Attoh, Vida Addei,
who is the Deputy National Treasurer, to apologise to me. He also asked Mr Yaw
Boateng Gyan to join them but Yaw couldn’t come, and so it was Koku who
apologised to me for that falsehood.
"These are confidential matters that I would
have kept to myself, but due to the controversies that are emerging, I am
forced to come out and set the records straight.”
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