Former Energy and Education Minister under former President Akufo-Addo’s administration, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh has called on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to reconnect with its grassroots and build on the political tradition that has sustained the party and its predecessors for decades.
In a Facebook post, Dr Opoku Prempeh reflected on the history of the NPP and its roots in Kumasi, arguing that the party’s future depends on each generation being willing to organise, renew the movement and bring new people into its fold.
He said his thoughts often return to the history of the NPP whenever he is in Kumasi.
“You drive past Kejetia, hear the familiar noise of the city, see traders moving through the morning crowd and taxis jostling for space, and somewhere beneath all that movement lies another Kumasi,” he wrote.
According to him, that “other Kumasi” was shaped by political meetings, quiet discussions, sacrifice and people who were prepared to organise around ideas they believed in.
Dr Opoku Prempeh traced part of that history to September 1954, when political activists and cocoa farmers were organising around growing political and economic grievances.
He recalled that on 7 September 1954, Baffour Osei Akoto led a large gathering of supporters to the banks of the Subin River, where a sheep was slaughtered to symbolise the birth of the National Liberation Movement (NLM).
“Within a few months, the NLM was already demonstrating its political strength,” he said.
He noted that the NLM later joined forces with the Northern People’s Party, led by Chief S. D. Dombo, and other opposition groups, contributing to the emergence of the United Party under Dr K. A. Busia.
For Dr Opoku Prempeh, that history is significant because it shows that the political tradition that eventually produced the NPP was never intended to belong to one part of the country.
“Kumasi supplied an important stream of that history, but the river became larger because others joined it,” he wrote.
He said the political movement associated with Baffour Osei Akoto in Ashanti developed alongside the tradition of Dombo in northern Ghana and the contributions of political actors from other parts of the country.
“It was never meant to remain an Ashanti project,” he stressed.
Dr Opoku Prempeh said the tradition evolved through the NLM, United Party and Progress Party before finding renewed expression in the NPP in 1992.
He also paid tribute to activists who kept the tradition alive during years when the party was not in government.
“There are old party people in Kumasi who remember when supporting this tradition did not come with the comfort of being in government,” he said.
“They remember meetings organised with very little, journeys made from constituency to constituency, money contributed quietly, homes opened for political discussions and activists who kept the organisation alive simply because they believed it mattered.”
He cautioned against reducing Ashanti Region’s relationship with the NPP to the often used description of the region as the party’s “World Bank”.
“That may sound like a colourful expression, but our relationship with this tradition is older and deeper than votes,” he wrote.
He said Kumasi and the Ashanti Region had produced organisers, thinkers, activists, parliamentarians and leaders, while also providing the political tradition with strength during difficult periods.
But Dr Opoku Prempeh said the party could not depend indefinitely on what previous generations had built.
“History also carries a responsibility, and you cannot live forever on what your forebears built,” he said.
He pointed to the organisers of the NLM, the United Party and the NPP as examples of generations that repeatedly rebuilt the political tradition.
“Every generation receives both an inheritance and an assignment,” he said.
Against that background, Dr Opoku Prempeh called on the Ashanti Region to consider what it can do to strengthen the NPP under its current leadership.
“Today, as Dr Mahamudu Bawumia leads our party into its next chapter, Ashanti Region must ask not only what it has contributed to the NPP, but what it is prepared to contribute to its future,” he wrote.
He urged the party to strengthen its constituencies, reconnect with grassroots supporters, encourage younger people to participate, develop new organisers and create space for fresh ideas.
“We must strengthen our constituencies, reconnect with the grassroots, bring younger people into the tradition, develop new organisers, make room for new ideas and ensure that the strength of Kumasi helps strengthen the NPP across Ghana,” he said.
Dr Opoku Prempeh said the story of the Subin River still carried a lesson for the party decades later: political traditions survive only when successive generations are prepared to build on what they inherit.
“Political traditions survive because every generation decides that what it inherited is worth building upon,” he said.
“Kumasi has done that before, and our generation must do it again.”
