National Chairman of the Opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Ofosu- Ampofo, has said that he still stands by his decision to pull the party out of the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election in 2019 and that he has never regretted making that decision.
According to him, the claim that he took the decision without consulting anyone in the party is also false and should be disregarded.
Since the announcement of his intention to contest the NDC National Chairman race, the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has in recent times been throwing jabs at Mr Ofosu-Ampofo over his decision to withdraw the party from the by-election and has been shifting blame when the decision backfired.
According to him, he had warned Mr Ofosu-Ampofo not to take that decision, saying “I was attending a conference in the Dominican Republic as the Vice President of Socialist International when Chairman Ofosu-Ampofo called me saying that some vigilantes had fired gunshots all over the place and so he thinks the NDC should withdraw from the election. I told him don’t, it is a bad decision, and that he’ll set a bad precedent in the NDC. I told him with violence or not, the NDC will win so the party shouldn’t withdraw.”
He continued that “when his decision backfired, today he’s going round across the country saying he took the decision with Asiedu Nketiah and President Mahama. I don’t think he is courageous enough because if you are a leader and you make decisions you should accept responsibilities whether it fails or succeeds.”
However, Mr Ofosu-Ampofo in an interview on Adom TV’s The Big Agenda, said his decision was taken in the interest of the party and he as national Chairman cannot take any decision without the consent of other party leaders.
“These issues I don’t want to address them again. But as the National Chairman of the party, the constitution doesn’t allow me to take decisions on my own. So I indeed consulted first. But my decision was the best I ever made. It saved a lot of lives on that day. Nobody knows what would have happened if we had stayed in,” he said.
He continued that: “After we came out of the elections you could see that the entire country was revived on the issue of vigilantism. It aroused national conversation and a law was even passed to ban vigilantism and so on, so you can see it was a good one, and I have never regretted.”