Member of Parliament for Offinso North, Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku says Ghanaians know better than to buy allegations of drug dealing or peddling against Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, the New Patriotic Party’s presidential candidate.
Dr. Apraku, a member of the NPP’s campaign team for Election 2008 said those claims by the party’s opponents are baseless, calculated to give the presidential candidate a bad name.
“It cannot be the case that a serious presidential candidate will be accused of being a drug addict or somebody who peddles in drugs or somebody who has been arrested, it is not true!
“This man has operated at the centre of our foreign policy. No country has ever raised an issue. He’s never been arrested. He’s never been caught. It is all political mudslinging; trying to dirty him and paint him and create an image that is not befitting of a president.”
Dr. Apraku, who also contested Nana Addo for the party’s presidential candidature, was speaking to Citi FM’s Richard Sky after the NPP organised a press conference to officially react to issues raised by the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress at the launching of its new image and national campaign agenda.
According to Apraku, Akufo-Addo has been one of Ghana’s most effective foreign ministers ever and has been part of the Kufuor administration, “and his credibility, his competence, his courage, his conviction are things that nobody can challenge.
“We are not going to allow this to stick. When we do our own internal survey and ask people; do you think Akufo-Addo deserves the image they are painting of him, no, we know Akufo-Addo to be a man of courage, a man of conviction, a man who is selfless, who is compassionate, who has stood up and sacrificed his life so that we can be better,” he said.
Akufo-Addo is selfless
Dr. Apraku said Akufo-Addo has been part of every effort aimed at expanding the frontiers of democracy in the country, including issues that affect the poor and the marginalised, and he certainly cannot be painted, all of a sudden, in a new image that is not befitting of him.
“He’s not a drug dealer, as far as saying that NPP somehow has been encouraging drug transit, I think Ghanaians know better than that. We are men and women of decency, our public record is there, our President has more respect than perhaps many, many presidents that we have had in this country. Nobody is going to tell us that President Kufuor is encouraging or condoning the transit of drugs into this country. And the policies are there, besides the perception, the reality is that we are doing more now to combat that menace more than ever before. Yes, more are coming in, that we know of, but it may well have been that they were coming in even in larger quantities but the system in operation at that time did not allow about it and so we have to be very, very careful in determining whether the actual trade or the transit through here has been more or less relative to other periods. I am inclined to believe, that it cannot be worse than it was in when we came into office,” he insisted.
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