Rising from the rank and file of a political party to assume a high office of a Member of Parliament (MP) could pose as daunting for many.
But for most new entrants in Ghana’s current 8th Parliament, the stories abound. Mention can be made of a new face representing the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the constituents Afigya Kwabre North in Parliament Collins Adomako-Mensah, who is replacing his senior and predecessor Mr. Marfo Nana Amaniampong.
For the third consecutive time following its creation in 2012, the Afigya Kwabre North parliamentary seat has been retained by the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
From his early days, Collins Adomako-Mensah’s political exploits in the NPP has been an extensive one, with him involved in several voluntary activities, from a very young age, when all he stood to gain for his unwavering diligence and spirit of sacrifice, was the advancement of the party’s course towards its ultimate triumph.
He volunteered as an NPP polling agent in the 2004 and 2008 General Elections.
From 2003 to 2007 during his days at the University of Ghana, he was a staunch member of TESCON — Tertiary Students Confederacy of the New Patriotic Party — a student wing of the party.
He has chaired the Finance Committee of Afigya Kwabre District Assembly, where he was also an Executive Committee member.
He was a formidable member of his constituency’s NPP campaign team for the 2016 election.
Having completed senior high school at Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School, Mr. Collins Adomako-Mensah continued to the University of Ghana (Legon) for a BSc in Administration in Banking and Finance where he graduated with First Class Honors in 2007.
Further, he obtained other certificate qualifications and membership from the Institute of Charted Accountants (ICA) Ghana; and the Association of Chartered Institute of Bankers (ACIB).
He holds an Executive MBA from the University of Ghana Business School and has strode through his professional career with impeccable mastery.
Mr. Collins Adomako-Mensah’s professional expertise in the financial services industry will be a valuable addition to Parliamentary business.
He has over the years worked in microfinance and the universal banking sub-sector – retail and commercial banking playing various roles including Credit Analyst, Relationship Manager, Cluster Manager among others.
The 2020 General Elections seemingly flung the democratic envelope of Ghana into what can be called a paradigm shift, as Ghanaians are at the brink of seeing a regime of governance characterized by an opposition party having majority seats in parliament.
As a product of the 2020 election — the most crucial of its kind as the 8th Parliament promises to be — a new face such as Mr. Collins Adomako-Mensah within the NPP fraternity is needed to forge a common ground for the pursuit of our nation’s developmental goals.
If the capricious diatribes of the opposing National Democratic Congress (NDC) concerning the election’s results — in this case the parliamentary — were true, then the next four years would have seen an incredibly stark shift in the nation’s democracy, is that, for the first time in the history of Ghana, a ruling party possesses minority seats in Parliament.
Nonetheless, the marginal difference in minority-majority numbers between a ruling party and its strongest opponent is an ominous newness, whose implication is nothing shy of a paradigm shift given the discordant levels of democratic maturity portrayed by each of these political parties.
The dramatic decline in seats by the NPP lends the case of the NDC most of its rather minuscule rationality in the cocktail of rhetorics they have used to critique both the genuineness of the Electoral Commission’s official results, and the performance of the NPP government the past four years.
As complicated as this conundrum may be, the simplest, sincerest way of approaching it, irrespective of one’s political bias is by admitting that a good number of the NPP Members of Parliament who lost their seats have axes to grind in their own defeat.
Truly, when the tremendous performance of the Nana Addo-led government is considered, vis-à-vis the seats lost, in an election which would have been an easy win for the NPP, then saying that something was fatally missing in the camp of the many toppled-over NPP Members of Parliament leading to the polls is only a logical assertion.
Thus as a newcomer in Parliament Mr. Collins Adomako-Mensah is unquestionably praiseworthy for having won the love and trust of his constituents in such crucial times.
From his early days, Mr. Collins Adomako-Mensah’s political exploits in the NPP has been an extensive one, with him involved in several voluntary activities, from a very young age, when all he stood to gain for his unwavering diligence and spirit of sacrifice, was the advancement of the party’s course towards its ultimate triumph.
Hallmarked by humility, relentlessness and sacrifice, Mr. Collins Adomako-Mensah is evidently one of the most promising Members of Parliament to look out for in the 8th Parliament.
He is a beacon of hope for his constituents, and stands to be an essential resource in the delivery of the mandate of His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa-Akufo Addo over the next four (4) years.
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The writer, Hafiz Tijani, is the Ashanti Regional correspondent, Citi FM, Citi TV.
