The Chief Executive Officer of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), Stephen Asamoah Boateng, has said that for the New Patriotic Party’s projection of the ‘breaking the eight’ agenda to become a reality in 2024, party communicators must take advantage of the party’s training platforms and programs to effectively learn the basics of communication.
Mr. Asamoah Boateng, popularly known as Asabee, gave the advice when he addressed students of the Valley View University chapter of the party’s Tertiary Students Conference, TESCON.
The chapter was swearing in newly elected executives at Oyibi in the Kpone Katamanso Municipality of the Greater Accra Region.
According to him, understanding one’s audience and having the ability to craft tailored messages to the audience is critical in political communication and persuasion.
He said this will be crucial in making the breaking the eight agenda successful through the use of social media.
“Social media is very good, but before you move into the digitization stage of communication, you must understand the basics of communication; how you write, how you speak, and how you convert the manual way of communication to the modern digitization process. To break the eight, communicators like you must learn and understand how you build your arguments and how to conclude and summarize. Also, you must understand your audience and know what to say to satisfy what they are looking for.”
In all, fourteen newly elected executives of the Valley View University Chapter of TESCON were sworn into office in a ceremony at the Good News Theological Seminary in Oyibi.
Apart from the core executives, three main portfolios have been created which are the Information Technology IT Team, the Research Team, and the Communication Team which are expected to work in sync with the newly elected executives.
Held under the theme, ‘Youth in Development Through New Media and Digitization’, the handing over ceremony had an informal session where ‘Tesconians’ freely expressed their concerns about scholarship and national service posting challenges, and appealed to the party hierarchy to urgently address the matter since it had the tendency to cause disaffection within the party.
The ceremony also provided the platform where the ‘Break the Eight’ agenda was well explained to party members.
The swearing-in ceremony also brought together numerous party faithful such as constituency, regional and national executives as well as former ministers of state.
Among the dignitaries who thronged the Good News Theological Seminary were the Chief Executive Officer CEO of State Interests and Governance Authority, SIGA, Stephen Asamoah Boateng, the CEO of the Ghana Tourism Development Company, GTDC, Kwadwo Odame Antwi, the Metropolitan Chief Executive MCE of Accra Metropolitan Assembly Mohammed Adjei Sowah, and a former Director of Communications for the NPP, Yaw Adomako Baafi.
The rest were the Greater Accra Regional Secretary of the NPP Odarlai Parker, Regional Women’s Organizer Grace Acheampong, the Deputy Youth Organizer for the Kpone Katamanso Constituency Siame Bright among others.
Newly sworn-in President of the Valley View University Chapter of the TESCON, Marnah Aminu Marteye, in his acceptance speech expressed his gratitude to his patriots for the honor done them.
Touching on their preparedness to help contribute to keeping the party in power come 2024, Mr. Marnah Aminu said if the ‘Break the Eight’ agenda is to be actualized come 2024, certain key policies must be put in place by the party hierarchy to help propagate the good works of the party.
“Among other things, I would like to propose that a website and a digital newspaper headline be created as a means of communicating the party’s successful policies and programs.” 
As they took turns addressing the gathering, speakers advised the students to take advantage of the cyberspace as the most effective means of highlighting the good works being done by the NPP government under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Speaking on the theme ‘Youth Development through New Media’, a former Director of Communications for the NPP, Yaw Adomako Baafi also provided an in-depth presentation on effective political communication in the digital age, and charged the youth to be research-oriented as it is the only way they can have facts to back well presented logical arguments on national issues as communicators.
“Credibility is important in communication and so as political communicators, you need to be credible and to build this credibility, you must first be factual, and to be factual you have to do a lot of research on issues before going ahead to publish or speak, otherwise you cannot persuade.”
Cash donations were presented to the incoming executives to aid them in their work.
Carlos Atsu Calony