Paul Afoko: Perhaps the unifier the NPP needs now
As the race for the National Chairmanship of the New Patriotic Party gathers momentum, delegates will inevitably be confronted with impressive résumés, competing loyalties, old alliances and new promises. But I believe there is a more fundamental question the party must ask itself:
Who, at this particular moment in the NPP's history, is best positioned to help bring the party together?
For me, the answer is Paul Afoko.
I do not arrive at this conclusion because I think Afoko is perfect. Politics does not produce perfect candidates. I have arrived at this conclusion because of what I believe the NPP needs most urgently today: maturity, reconciliation, institutional memory, courage and, above all, unity.
Paul Afoko's relationship with the NPP has been tested in ways few politicians would wish to experience. He rose to become National Chairman of the party, only to find himself at the centre of one of the most turbulent periods in its recent history. Allegations were made against him, many of which, in my view, were never satisfactorily substantiated in the court of public opinion.He could have chosen bitterness. He could have embarked on a campaign to destroy the party that had rejected him.
He could have granted interviews every other week, revealing internal conversations, attacking party leaders and supplying political opponents with ammunition against the NPP.
Most importantly, when others who felt aggrieved by the party chose different political paths or openly worked against it, Afoko stayed.
He largely kept his counsel and endured. He remained committed to the tradition.
There is something to be said for a man who believes he has been treated unfairly by his political family but refuses to burn down the family house. That, to me, is maturity.
And perhaps the greatest irony of Paul Afoko's candidature is this: the man who once became a symbol of internal division may now be uniquely placed to become an instrument of reconciliation.
The NPP does not merely need a Chairman who can preside over meetings, supervise elections and speak at rallies. It needs someone capable of reaching across the various internal divides and reminding everyone that no individual, faction or presidential ambition is bigger than the party.
Afoko has known victory within the NPP. He has also known rejection. He knows what it feels like to sit at the highest table, and he knows what it feels like to be pushed away from it.
That experience can either make a politician bitter or make him wiser.
From what I have observed, Afoko appears to have chosen the latter.
There is also an ethnic argument being whispered in some quarters which, frankly, should have no place in the NPP's consideration of who becomes its National Chairman.
The argument is that because the party's current flagbearer is from northern Ghana, the National Chairman should not also come from the North.
But even before interrogating the history of the party, that argument fails on arrival because Paul Afoko and the flagbearer do not belong to the same ethnic group. Northern Ghana is not one tribe. It is home to numerous ethnic groups, cultures, languages and traditional identities.
To collapse all these people into one convenient political ethnic category called "Northerners" is both intellectually lazy and politically dangerous.
But let us stretch the argument further.
Suppose, for argument's sake, we accept the proposition that the issue is not tribe but geography: that a northerner cannot be flagbearer while another northerner serves as National Chairman. Then we must confront the history of the NPP itself.
For much of the party's history up to 2020, the presidential candidate and National Chairman were both southerners.
The heavens did not fall.
Nobody seriously suggested that two southerners occupying those positions automatically made the NPP a southern party. Delegates considered leadership, competence, political circumstances and the interests of the party.
If having a southern flagbearer and a southern National Chairman could work for the NPP in the past, then having two people who happen to come from the northern half of Ghana cannot suddenly become an existential problem today.
We cannot manufacture a new political principle simply because the personalities have changed.
The NPP has always presented itself as a national party. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that nationalism in practice.
The more important consideration should be: Who can unite the NPP? Who can rebuild trust? Who can speak to the wounded without frightening the establishment? Who can engage the old guard while giving younger members a sense of belonging? Who possesses enough political scars to understand that internal battles, when allowed to fester, can become more dangerous than the external opponent?
My answer remains Paul Afoko.
There is another reason his candidature deserves serious consideration.
Sometimes political parties need people who have experienced the consequences of internal conflict to lead the process of reconciliation. A person who has never been politically wounded can easily underestimate the pain of those who feel excluded, Afoko cannot.
He knows what exclusion feels like, he knows the cost of factionalism, he knows how quickly disagreements among party people can become personal. And he should therefore understand better than most that the next National Chairman cannot afford to become the chairman of one faction against another.
The NPP's next Chairman must be the Chairman of the entire NPP. That means the Chairman must have room for those who supported one presidential aspirant and those who supported another; those who have remained influential and those who feel forgotten; the old activists who built the party and the younger generation that must inherit it.
The party does not need another season of settling scores. It needs healing, reconciliation, discipline without vindictiveness and authority without arrogance.
And it needs a Chairman secure enough in himself to understand that bringing yesterday's opponent back into the fold is not weakness. Sometimes that is the highest form of political leadership.
Paul Afoko has already had power within the NPP. He has also experienced life without it. Perhaps that combination has prepared him for this moment better than anything else could have.
His return should therefore not be seen merely as one man's attempt at political rehabilitation. It could become something much bigger: an opportunity for the NPP itself to demonstrate that political disagreements need not become permanent political divorces.
A party capable of reconciliation within itself is better positioned to ask a country to trust it with national leadership.
Delegates should certainly listen to every candidate. They should examine their records, temperaments, ideas and capacity to organise the party. But when all that is done, they must remember what the NPP needs most at this moment.
And among those presenting themselves for the position, I believe Paul Afoko offers the most compelling opportunity to begin that process of rebuilding and reunification.
He was tested by adversity and stayed with the party. He had reasons to be bitter but did not make bitterness his political identity.
He could have walked away, but he remained.
Perhaps the time has come for the party he refused to abandon to take another look at him.
For me, Paul Afoko is not simply a candidate for National Chairman. He represents an opportunity for the NPP to close an old chapter, heal some old wounds and begin writing a new one together.
By Abdul Hayi Moomin