Ndebugre joins NPP

Former Member of Parliament (MP) for Zebilla Constituency in the Upper East Region, John Akparibo NdebugreFormer Member of Parliament (MP) for Zebilla Constituency in the Upper East Region, John Akparibo Ndebugre, has officially declared his intention to join the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and has been accepted by the Zebilla constituency and Upper East NPP Regional Executives at a ceremony in Bolgatanga.

He joins the party with a group of other persons he said were members and executives of the People’s National Convention (PNC) in the Zebilla constituency who believe in internal party democracy and rule of law which, he claimed, were missing in the current PNC led by Dr. Edward Nasigri Mahama.

According to him, the “so-called” national executives of the PNC have reduced the party to a rump and therefore he and the 30 ward executives and the agents in the one hundred polling stations for the 2004 and 2008 general elections could not be with it, hence the decision to leave and join the NPP in its struggle to stop the NDC government from moving the nation in a wrong direction.

This and other statements created confusion in the minds of most pressmen at the conference, prompting them to ask whether his decision to join the NPP together with the Zebilla constituency branch of the PNC was in the true sense of developing party democracy in the country or was in furtherance of his battle with the National Executive of the PNC.

“Our decision as a group is in support of the development of democracy in Ghana and the dissociation of the local party executives and structures from the rule of an illegitimate national executive.

“The branch executive structures met at Zebilla on Friday, 1st May 2009 and unanimously resolved to break their links with the PNC and become part and parcel of the New Patriotic Party,” Mr. Ndebugri answered.

Meanwhile, at the press conference to officially announce their decision, Mr. Ndebugre said he was addressing the conference as the legitimate First National Vice Chairman of the PNC and the party’s immediate past MP for Zebilla; which again generated questions as to why he was still carrying himself as the PNC First National Vice Chairman, when he contested the 2008 parliamentary election as an independent candidate.

The former MP, in answering that question, said he did not recognize the legitimacy of the current national executives neither did the Zebilla branch of the party, and so did not see why he should tender in a resignation letter to them.

He explained that he went independent in the last general election with the full backing of the constituency branch and ward executives of the party.

According to Mr. John Ndebugre, it is sad that after the death of Dr. Limann, the PNC has fallen into extreme bad ways and all efforts on the part of well-meaning members of the party to salvage the situation have hit the rocks, hence resulting in the unconstitutional ousting of the National Executive Officers who were legitimately elected on 29th May 2004 from office.

Present at the conference were the Zebilla constituency chairman of PNC, Akparibo Azure; Regional NPP Chairman, Alhaji Ahmed; MP for Binduri, Stephen Yakubu; and two former DCEs for Bawku West District, Desmond Abugbilla and Appiah Abaane.

From Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bolgatanga