A National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate aspirant for the Pru East Constituency of the Bono East Region, Emmanuel Kwaku Boam, has berated the sitting Member of Parliament for the area, Dr Kwabena Donkor, for neglecting the constituency.
Boam, also known as Lord, believes the neglect is the reason Dr Donkor’s votes keep decreasing each election year.
Boam said the constituents are fed up with the former Minister of Power and are calling for change in the upcoming primaries of the opposition party, slated for May 13, 2023.
“The delegates are calling for change because our MP is not putting up his best,” Boam said in an interview on Inside Politics on Power 97.9 FM, and monitored by GhanaWeb.
The businessman has since vowed to unseat Dr Kwabena Donkor, who is seeking re-election to be in parliament, making it his fourth attempt.
“Dr Kwabena Donkor’s popularity in Pru East has declined and that is why in the 2020 elections, the NDC presidential candidate, H.E John Mahama secured more votes than the MP,” Boam argued in Akan.
The aspirant, who has already been cleared by the party to contest in the race, attributed the dwindling popularity of the MP to his failure to use his MPs Common Fund judiciously, brewing anger among the youth of the area.
Prue East is one of the poorest districts in the country, where majority of the indigenes are peasant farmers and periodically need support from privileged persons to be able to secure government work for their relatives.
Boam alleged that when Dr Donkor was appointed to be the power minister in the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama administration, he could not help anyone in the district to secure a job in the energy sector, despite his influence at the time.
He also alleged that the MP has not been supporting the “poor farmers in the district” with agriculture inputs to improve their yield.
“He (Kwabena Donkor) is not accessible. You can’t go to his house; when you go to his residence, you’ll be told to go to the party office to wait for him and by the time you get to the party office, he’ll be nowhere to be found,” Emmanuel Boam added.
Boam said although Dr Kwabena Donkor has become quite weak due to his age, the latter has failed to support him, even though he has been mobilizing the youth in the constituency for him during election periods.
“He is not even strong to be representing us. He should have supported me to lead because I have done a lot for the party in the recent past,” said Boam.
He added, “I was the one that organized the youth for our victory in the constituency in 2020 and I spent my own resources on that mobilization drive all the time.
“The NPP tried and shared monies but their keep-fit events were not well attended like ours. I organized about ten keep-fit events with my resources before elections 2020.”
To him, if the delegates take cash from Dr Kwabena Donkor and give him the nod to lead the party in Pru East to elections 2024, and he wins the primaries, the NPP will snatch the seat from the NDC.
“Dr Kwabena Donkor’s votes keep declining each election year. We have to watch that too,” he said.
Boam, who is number 2 on the ballot paper, has outlined a comprehensive agriculture policy for the people of the area should he become their MP.
Even before the primaries, he has been giving farmers in the area support in various ways to improve their farming.
He said he has provided tractors to help farmers clear their farmlands and given out pepper seeds which can cover 2000 acres to farmers.
He said he has also managed to get off takers for the pepper farmers in the area.
He said he is committed to lifting the constituency up to a point where agriculture can change the lives of the people who are predominantly yam, maize and pepper farmers.
Source: ghanaweb.com
