A Senior Researcher at the Kumasi Technical University (KTU), Prof Smart Sarpong, has advised the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to resist calls to distance itself completely from former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He urged the party instead to study his failures to avoid repeating them in future administrations.
Speaking in an interview on Joy FM’s Top Story on Monday, February 2, Prof Sarpong said that although Akufo-Addo’s final years in office were marked by serious challenges and widespread public dissatisfaction, they offer critical lessons the party must not ignore.
According to Prof Sarpong, the NPP should treat that difficult period as a case study in leadership rather than join political opponents in completely disowning the former President.
“They [NPP] can use those test days as serious learning cases. They need Nana Akufo-Addo around to guide them on where he failed, how he did things wrongly, and even the things he did not do,” he advised.
He argued that discarding Akufo-Addo wholesale—despite his achievements—would deprive the party of valuable institutional knowledge needed to govern better in the future.
“They should not join their opponents in throwing Akufo-Addo away entirely because of the bad times,” Prof Sarpong cautioned. “No. They need him to learn a lot of useful lessons from him, especially the point where things started going wrong.”
The KTU researcher said these lessons would be particularly important should NPP flagbearer Dr Mahamudu Bawumia eventually win the presidency.
“So that if Bawumia gets the opportunity to be president, when he gets there, he will not fail,” he explained. “There are alternative ways of going around the things Akufo-Addo could not go around.”
Prof Sarpong’s comments come amid growing internal and public debate over how closely the NPP’s next flagbearer should be associated with the Akufo-Addo administration, following economic hardships and governance criticisms that dominated the latter part of his tenure.
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