{"id":1155267,"date":"2022-07-21T15:49:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T15:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/07\/21\/akufo-addo-encouraged-me-to-become-a-lawyer-paid-my-fees-justin-frimpong-kodua\/"},"modified":"2022-07-21T15:49:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T15:49:00","slug":"akufo-addo-encouraged-me-to-become-a-lawyer-paid-my-fees-justin-frimpong-kodua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/07\/21\/akufo-addo-encouraged-me-to-become-a-lawyer-paid-my-fees-justin-frimpong-kodua\/","title":{"rendered":"Akufo-Addo encouraged me to become a lawyer, paid my fees \u2013 Justin Frimpong Kodua"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/maxresdefault-30-1024x576.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"8jEKot2kDBg\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Akufo-Addo encouraged me to be lawyer and he paid my school fees \u2013 Justin Kodua\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8jEKot2kDBg?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Justin Frimpong Kodua, has revealed the role President Nana Akufo-Addo played in his decision to become a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, it was the President who even encouraged him to read law in addition to his ambition to be a politician.<\/p>\n<p>JFK, as he is popularly called, recalled that as a vibrant young man \u2013 who was born into a family of NPP stalwarts \u2013 his dream was to be a full-time politician.<\/p>\n<p>However, that was destined to change when he escorted a leading Member of the party in 2009 to visit President Akufo-Addo at his Nima residence.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/22191989129,1002554\/MGL\/mgl_ado_atunwa_300x250 --><\/p>\n<p>\u201cImmediately he [Nana Addo] saw me, he said \u2018Kodua, we lost the elections. Now we are both unemployed\u2019. And we all just laughed,\u201d he reminisced.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to this visitation, Mr Kodua said he had first met President Akufo-Addo at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where he was a Student Leader in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>He said he made an impression on the President who was then the Foreign Minister.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember he said to me, \u2018Young man, you are very eloquent and I will like you to be part of the young people I will groom in the party\u2019,\u201d JFK recalled.<\/p>\n<p>The short interaction was enough for Mr Kodua to consider President Akufo-Addo as a mentor in his political career.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, when he visited the President at his home and was asked what his aspirations were, he did not hold back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was very honest with him, I told him I wanted to pursue politics as a career. So he advised me then \u2013 that was 2009 \u2013 that if I am interested in politics and it is something I want to do as a full-time job why don\u2019t I go to law school. For that one, you have a backup profession and you don\u2019t need to rely on someone to give you employment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, the moment you get into politics, you are \u2018tainted\u2019 and if you are not careful and your government loses elections, people will be uncomfortable employing you but if you are a lawyer, you can be self-employed,\u201d he told Evans Mensah on\u00a0<strong>JoyNews\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>PM Express<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Kodua said the then opposition leader didn\u2019t end there, he went a step further to pay for his fees for his first term in law school.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"8jEKot2kDBg\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Akufo-Addo encouraged me to be lawyer and he paid my school fees \u2013 Justin Kodua\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8jEKot2kDBg?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>            <!--  [embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=videoseries[\/embed]<!--\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>--><\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"lK8W9q5YdLE\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Corruption In Ghana: People&#039;s experience and views - Badwam Mpensenpensenmu on Adom TV (21-7-22)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lK8W9q5YdLE?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Justin Frimpong Kodua, has revealed the role President Nana Akufo-Addo played in his decision to become a lawyer. According to him, it was the President who even encouraged him to read law in addition to his ambition to be a politician. JFK, as he is popularly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1155269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[648,6810,3416,10019,10020,10021,7580,199],"class_list":["post-1155267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-akufoaddo","tag-encouraged","tag-fees","tag-frimpong","tag-justin","tag-kodua","tag-lawyer","tag-paid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}