On Thursday, July, 17, 2025, news made rounds that in granting an interview to Joy FM, Former New Patriotic Party (NPP) National Chairman, you, Hon. Freddie Armah Blay, blamed the party’s political setbacks not on the performance of the Akufo-Addo-led regime, but on the frustration and apathy of its grassroots base.
Please Sir, as a Catholic, if you had endeavour to practice the virtues the Church taught us, particularly, humility and in that virtue, you humbly self-critic the performance of the NPP, party and government, you would have blamed yourselves for the abysmal performance of the party in the 2024 General Elections and left the grassroot base out of the equation.
You would have gone down on your knees to apologise to the rank and file of the party, particularly the grassroot, for failing them, because when we talk about failure here, we talk about the NPP, party and government and not the rank and file.
I will not challenge you on the works the NPP government, under H.E. Nana Akufo Addo, did for Ghana but I can point out how you failed the teeming grassroot of the party.
Hon. Blay, a grassroot supporter, of any political party, will readily give all he can and sacrifice for the party, in the hope of victory and this includes the NPP supporter.
He is someone, who against all odds, believes an NPP government will perform well and change his life. So, in the lorry stations, market square and in any gathering, he will seize the opportunity to convince all and sundry that his NPP is the best. Those in the rural areas will campaign deep into the night, trekking from village to village in the dark exposing themselves to dangerous animals to meet the farmers who had returned home from their farmsand evangelise the good news of NPP.
All these and more, they will do to make sure the NPP comes to power and by the grace and mercy of God, the NPP did come to power. The expectations of these grassroot supporters will hit the skies, for they believe their lives will change for the better. Of course, they are not after government appointments, as you did. They just need employment for their wards or some opportunity where they could easily access funds through micro-financing to boost their line of business, e.g. farming and trading.
They waited and waited and waited and nothing came, meanwhile their NDC siblings started enjoying from the fruits of their labour. And here, I tell the story of Amina, a kooko seller who lives in a Zongo. Her husband is bedridden and she is the breadwinner of the family. She and her family are dye-in-the-wool NPP members.
During the 2016 Election campaigns, she was chosen to be among the organizers of the women and she invested the little she had into the party. The NPP came to power and nothing was done for her, yet she watched on, as NDC faithful were rather benefiting. Come 2020, she never gave up and did all she could for the party she loved so much. Campaign time came and gifts of pans, sewing machines, pieces of cloth, electrical appliances and others were given to the NDC faithful, while the NPP ones were left out.
They were told, “you relax, we shall win again and it will be your turn to enjoy. We are giving these to the NDC to draw them into the party.” Meanwhile the NDC faithful seeing how their counterparts in the NPP were being treated, said if they join the NPP they will also be neglected. So, they would stick to their NDC and collect whatever the NPP dished out.
Come 2020, the NPP won the elections again and Amina and the party faithful were still neglected.
Hon. Blay, you were chairman of the party when decision was taken that no party grassroot was to be employed (even if they were qualified). Prof. Ken Attafuah revealed this to the public about what you and government decided and Gabby Otchere Darko came to back this.
Hon. Blay, before the 2016 elections, the party recruited many young and energetic men to form vigilante groups to counter any threats from the NDC, with promisesthat they would be smiling after the NPP formed government. Unfortunately, once in power, these youth were abandoned and dumped like trash. Some, were even jailed while in active service,fighting for party and government.
Hon. Blay, you were the longest serving national chairman of the party, ever from 2015 to 2022, so you must surely be at meetings which decided to collapse businesses of known NPP members who were perceived not to be on Nana’s side. And so it was, NPP members who would always vote ‘over-all’, for the NPP had their businesses collapsed and they crash down from grace to grass for doing nothing wrong to the party except for expressing their diverse opinions.
Some NPP members attempted to bring in investors to the country, but because of what they were perceived to be, their requests were turned down. They were not to make money to sponsor someone who was not the Establishment’s choice.
Hon. Blay, you are a businessman and I ask you, will you invest in a business which would not yield returns? So, please you should not blame the grassroot base of the party for walking away in 2024. Party and government became a wrong investment, so blame yourselves.
Under your watch, internal elections became cocoa-seasons for delegates who made enough money to see them through a few months. But that clouded their sense of judgment to elect incapable people into office, because that was what you wanted. No independent-minded person with diverse views was wanted in any party position.
Under your watch, for the first time, polling station executive elections, not only made news, but for the worse kind. Daggers were drawn, fists were fixed, to teach those who do not understand why people must be imposed on party, a good lesson.
Hon. Blay, during your administration, the NPP dropped from 169 seats to 132 after the 2020 elections. You set up a committee to find out what went wrong, but never bothered to tell party members and supporters, the findings of the committee? This showed great disrespect to the very pillars of the party.
People needed to know what went wrong so that they could collectively help fix the problem. But, did you attempt fixing the problems? Of course not, because if you did,2024 may have smiledon NPP. The problems were largely you, the party and government. The pride, the arrogance and ego-ism were what you practiced as if the ordinary member and supporter of the party needed you and not the other way round.
Oh, so you just think that the party faithful are just there to sacrifice their all and make sure the party remains in powerand after that you dump them only to assemble them again in the next election year?
What you said about the party supporters meant that their only responsibility is to make sure the party wins elections but this time round they simply refused to carry out their side of the covenant because you kept failing to honour yours. In all seriousness, your statement is an insult and if care is not taken more numbers will not go to vote in 2028.
The 2024 elections we have 115,000 more people who voted for NDC’s John Mahama and over 2 million less people voted for NPP’s Dr. Bawumia than they did in 2020. This indicated an additional 100,000 plus people believed it was worth sacrificing for JDM and over 2 million people felt it was not worth voting for DMB.
You, treated the grassroot with disdain, forgetting that they have the power to decide your fate. They hold that power on their thumbs.
Can I suggest that you socialists in high places in the NPP have achieved what Nkrumaists wanted since February, 1966 and that is to wipe the UP Tradition off the surface of the earth?
Today, the NPP is like this: A rich man visiting his home village one weekend,saw the abled men and women at a construction site, putting up a school block. They carried cement, gravels and concrete on their heads. He felt sad and back at the city, he purchased fifteen wheelbarrows and sent them to the elders to assist in the construction.
The following weekend he went back to the village. The workers were still carrying the concrete, gravel and cement on their heads. And the wheelbarrows? The elders were sitting in them and were being pushed around as they inspected work going on.
Hon. Freddie Blay, since you know very well that it is the NPP, party and government, which failed the rank and file of the party and not the other way round, do the needfuland come back again in humility after self-criticism and apologise to the supporters of the NPP.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
