Per projections, the regions in the northern part of the country were falling for H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2020 elections. The Savannah and North East regions took advantage and increased their popular votes in the presidential as well as the number of parliamentary seats in their respective regions, but Northern Region failed to do same.
There is no denial of the fact that the Chairman Samba-led executives increased the popular votes in the Northern Region but failed to add up to the number of parliamentary seats held by the party in the region.
It is worth asking this humble question, what are the reasons for the failure on the part of the regional executives?
The inability of the Northern regional executives to marshal grassroots supporters to canvas votes for NPP parliamentary candidates is one of the reasons why they failed to add up to the number of seats held by the party in the region prior to the 2020 general elections.
Mostly, the youth is described as the lifeblood of political parties because of the immense contribution to the success of political groupings. Any political party that neglects its youth will pay for it electorally. That is what happened to the NPP in the Northern Region.
The regional executives allegedly neglected the youth for the last four years of the first term of H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s government and as a result, failed to mobilize them to campaign for the party’s parliamentary candidates in the region.
Another situation said to have prevented the youth from contributing to the 2020 elections was the alleged negative treatment metered out to the women supporters within the party.
Another issue that supposedly got some of the youth and grassroots supporters annoyed was that some of the regional executives allegedly worked against NPP parliamentary candidates in the region.
There were clear Machiavellian tactics against Dr. Brahama Anyars and Felicia Tettey, candidates for Tamale Central and Sagnarigu constituencies respectively.
These issues or situations and many other incidents on the part of the regional executives contributed immensely to them not being able to fulfil their own promise of winning 15 seats for NPP in Northern Region.