As the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) National Chairmanship race heats up, Broadcast Journalist, lecturer, and author Abdul Hayi Moomen has weighed in with a pointed argument that of all the candidates presenting themselves to delegates, Awentami Paul Afoko is best placed to pull a divided party back together.
In an opinion piece circulating ahead of the contest, he argues that the more important question for delegates is not who has the most impressive résumé, but who can actually unite the NPP at this moment in its history.
His answer is Afoko, rationalizing that it is not because he is without flaws, but because his personal history within the party uniquely qualifies him for the job of reconciliation.
“Afoko represents an opportunity for the NPP to close an old chapter,” Moomen writes, casting his return as a chance for the party to show it can heal internal rifts rather than let them harden into permanent divisions.
In his view, Afoko’s return could be a precondition for the NPP asking the country to trust it with power again.
He noted that Afoko’s rise to the National Chairmanship, and his removal amid one of the most turbulent periods in the party’s recent history, was followed by what Moomen frames as a deliberate choice on Afoko’s part not to turn against the NPP afterwards.
Rather than granting hostile interviews or working against the party from outside, Moomen notes that Afoko stayed and kept his own counsel, a decision he characterises as a mark of maturity rather than weakness.
According to him, these traits qualify Afoko to lead a reconciliation process now. Having experienced both the top of the party and rejection from it, Afoko is described as someone who understands the cost of factionalism from the inside, and who would be positioned to draw both currently prominent figures and long-sidelined loyalists back into the fold.
He directly challenges an argument reportedly circulating among some delegates — that because the NPP’s presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, comes from northern Ghana, the National Chairman should not also come from the north.
Moomen dismisses this on two grounds: first, that Bawumia and Afoko do not share an ethnic group, since “northern Ghana” encompasses many distinct peoples rather than a single bloc; and second, that for most of the NPP’s history before 2020, both the flagbearer and National Chairman were southerners, without that ever being treated as a structural problem for the party.
