A former Deputy National Youth Organizer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Eric Edem Agbana, says he thought age was just a number until he started campaigning to become a parliamentary candidate for his party in the Ketu North Constituency.
The 32-year-old activist and politician said older delegates were bothered by his age and registered their dissatisfaction with how he will manage the affairs of the constituency when given the mandate.
“For some delegates, age was a crucial factor so they will ask you questions like, ‘You are merely 32 years. Can you handle this big constituency?’, how will it feel like for me 70 years old man to approach you for support, or help?’ and all of that so age really played a big role in their campaign,” he told Bridget Otoo on Metro TV’s One on One show which aired on Monday, June 19.
“At the same time that age was seen as a negative for me because Ketu North is a largely conservative constituency and this is the first time Ketu North saw a number of young people contesting and for me, being the youngest among all the eight others um they really raised issues about my age.”
Edem Agbana was quick to indicate that the age factor also aided his victory because the youthful delegates rally behind his campaign to see him cling onto power.
“But at the same time, we had young delegates who were so excited that a young person much younger than them or their peer was in the contest and so when you do a proper analysis of my support base, my first support base was largely among the youthful delegates. Mm so you so saw young people, some in their 20s, some in their 30s so excited that we have a young person who is seeking to represent them in parliament so they campaigned so passionately as though it was their own campaigns and at the same that age was a negative factor in some quarters our research also shows it was a positive factor, especially among the youthful delegates,” he narrated.
In the middle of the campaign, Edem Agbana says his team drew strategies to energize the aged delegates while remaining relevant to the youthful delegates.
“We needed to draw out strategies to remain very relevant and appealing to young people but at the same time adapt to the expectations of the aged,” he noted.
He explained that “Sometimes when you are going to campaign especially to the aged, you would have to let the young folks among your team wait for you and approach them with much older people in the campaign team to create an impression that, yes, even when he becomes MP, he’s not only going to be surrounded by older people so you have a very serene environment to also interact with him because he can relate with older folks as well so these were some strategies we needed to draw a good balance.
“Approaching young people with much very youthful members of the team because the young people were looking for a new face. They were looking for a new order of doing things. With them as well, you go with the same old face they have, they have known as the influencers in the constituency then they started feeling whether Edem is young but he’s coming to continue the same old order, Maybe, nothing much will change so we needed to find a very good balance,” Edem Agbana explained.
The National Executive of the NDC declared Edem Agbana winner of the Ketu North parliamentary primaries after a meeting with the contestants in the constituency.
Mr. Agbana won with 360 votes.
The closest John Kobla Adanu polled 359 votes.
