Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku has started “a consultative tour” of the country to collate views on his intention to contest the flagbearship race of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), his office has said.
The tour, according to Dr. Apraku’s spokesperson, will also solicit the support of members of the NPP as the former Minister for NEPAD and Regional Integration under John Kufour’s rule prepares to launch his bid to contest the party’s flagbearship race.
In a Citi News interview, Baah Acheamfour, said his boss has been meeting with polling station and constituency executives of the NPP as part of his “consultative tour”.
“Dr. Apraku is meeting people in the various constituencies… talking to them to get their views about the two defeats the party suffered in 2008 and 2012,” he said.
Mr. Acheamfour said the NPP must change its candidate for the next election, having suffered two previous defeats with Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as its flagbearer.
“We need change in the party,” he said. “The party has suffered these two defeats because of leadership”.
Dr. Apraku’s first shot at the NPP presidential ticket was in 2007, but he and 15 other candidates lost that race to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who went on to lose Ghana’s national elections in 2008.
Last year, Dr. Apraku issued a statement in which he claimed that some people in the party felt threatened by his decision to run for the 2016 flagbearership slot of the NPP.
“Some snake-tongued persons within the party have been hired to detract me from pursuing my agenda. But they will not succeed,” he claimed.
It was later reported that the Council of Elders of the NPP summoned Dr. Apraku to appear before them after he had made equally damaging comments to the youth wing of the party in Kumasi.
Reports say Dr. Apraku had asked supporters of the NPP to elect what he called “a right leader” to help the party win power in 2016.
Meanwhile, another NPP Presidential hopeful, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, has dismissed views that Nana Akufo Addo’s seeming popularity within the party makes him the best possible choice to lead the party.
In an exclusive interview aired on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana Programme recently, Mr. Kyerematen said Akufo- Addo’s strong positioning within the party, “is not necessarily a reflection of what will help the party gain power in 2016.”
He said the party must rather find other means of helping it regain power adding, “Let us use every means available to try and find out exactly what will give us power.”
He also urged the party to investigate why it lost the last two general elections in the country, saying: “If a formidable party such as ours loses two successive elections, which we should have won by any stretch of imagination, something must be wrong and we should be bold enough to interrogate that.”