The New Patriotic Party (NPP) will be going for its super delegates congress today Saturday, August 26 to reduce the number of flagbearer aspirants from ten to five.
The aspirants are Kennedy Agyapong, Alan Kyerematen, Joe Ghartey, Kwadwo Poku, Dr Afriyie Akoto, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, Francis Addai-Nimoh, Dr Kofi Kunadu Apraku, Boakye Agyarko and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
Below is are brief profiles of all the ten aspirants …
Kennedy Ohene Agyapong
Kennedy Ohene Agyapong is a businessman who represents the Assin Central in parliament for the New Patriotic Party. He was first elected a member of parliament in 2000 to the seat of Assin North.
He retained his seat in the 2004 and 2008 parliamentary elections. In 2012 he was elected in the new seat of Assin Central and was re-elected in 2016. He also retained his seat in the 2020 general elections.
He is currently the Chairman of the Parliament’s Defense and Interior Committee and an aspirant for the presidential candidate on the ticket of the NPP.
Alan Kyerematen
Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen is also known as Alan Cash is a Ghanaian politician and an International diplomat. He served as the Minister for Trade and Industry from 2017 to 2023.
Mr Kyerematen was Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States and later Minister of Trade and Industry, Private Sector Development (PSD) and Presidential Special Initiatives (PSI) during the John Agyekum Kuffuor’s tenure of office . Kyerematen served as a trade advisor at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he coordinated the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC).
Mr Kyerematen made an attempt at the leadership of the New Patriotic Party in 2007, capturing 32.3% of votes cast. He was first runner-up to Nana Akufo-Addo who gained 47.96% of votes cast. Kyerematen made other attempts at the party’s leadership in 2010 and 2014 but placed second to Akufo-Addo, who won the primaries. In 2012, Ghana nominated Kyerematen for the post of WTO director-general to succeed out-going Director-General Pascal Lamy, and his candidature received the backing of the African Union (AU). However, he did not make the shortlist for the final selection process in 2013.
Joe Ghartey
Joe Ghartey is a lawyer, academic and politician. He is a former Attorney-General of Ghana (2006–2009), Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament (2013–2017) and Railways and Development Minister (2017–2021). Joe Ghartey hails from Shama, in the Western Region of the Republic of Ghana.
He is currently the NPP Member of Parliament for Essikado/Ketan Constituency in the Western Region of the Republic of Ghana. He was first elected to the seat in the December 2004 elections and was re-elected in both the December 2008 and December 2012 elections. In all the three elections he was not contested in the primaries of the NPP to choose the parliamentary candidate for the Constituency. During the administration of President John Agyekum Kufuor, Ghartey was appointed Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice in March 2005. He was soon promoted and appointed the substantive Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in June 2006, a position he held until January 2009 following the electoral loss of the NPP in the 2008 general elections. Ghartey was the longest serving Attorney-General and Minister of Justice under the Kufuor administration. He was also assigned a role as a consultant to the Parliament of Sierra Leone and drafted a code of conduct for that Parliament. In May, 2017.
In June 2006, a Ministerial reshuffle by President Kufuor saw Ghartey being elevated from the position of Deputy Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. He was subsequently sworn into office by President Kufuor on 16 June 2006 as the 20th Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of the Republic of Ghana.
Kwadwo Poku
Kwadwo Poku is currently the CEO and Founder of FKP & RALD INVESTMENT LTD. He also serves as Board Director of Multinational companies such as Pan African Capital Ghana Limited, FIFC Management and Development Limited. He was the Country Director for GASOP OIL (GHANA) LIMITED from June 2002 to September 2012.
As a shareholder and Ghanaian partner, he successfully negotiated with Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) for the award of Block 9, South Saltpond Basin in 2005. He later became the Managing Director of the Ghana office and Executive Director of the Parent Company in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
He worked as Special Assistant to the Minister of Tourism, the late Hon. Hawa Yakubu from January 2001 to May 2002. He was tasked to develop a Tourism Management Information System (TMIS), one of the flagship programs for the Minister. He designed the Ministry of Tourism first Website in 2001, which had a database of all tourist sites in Ghana. He was also the liaison between the Ministry and donor agencies that supported the Ministry to develop their TMIS.
Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto
Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto is an agricultural economist and politician. He was Member of Parliament for the Kwadaso Constituency from 2009 to 2017. He served as a cabinet minister in the Nana Akufo-Addo administration and as the Minister of Food and Agriculture of Ghana and he resigned on 10th January 2023 to concentrate on his presidential ambition. He holds MSc and PHD Degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Cambridge, England.
Kwabena Agyei Agyepong
He became active in Ghanaian politics when Ghana reentered constitutional rule after over a decade of Military rule. He played roles in the campaigns of NPP Presidential Candidates Albert Adu Boahen in 1992, John Kufuor in 1996. He also played a role in Nana Akufo-Addo’s campaign to win the presidential nomination in 1998 but subsequently played a role in the overall party effort during the 2000 General election which was won by John Kufuor. He was involved in this again in the year 2004.
He served as the Press Secretary to the President of Ghana John Kufuor from 2001 to 2006. Kwabena Agyapong was one of the 17 aspirants who contested for the party’s nomination to replace John Agyekum Kufuor as presidential candidate for the 2008 Ghanaian General Election. In 2014, Kwabena Agyapong stood for the position of General Secretary for the Party and won. However, he was suspended from the position after receipt of petitions from some members of the party against him and the then National Chair Paul Afoko.
Francis Addai Nimoh
He attended the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering in 1993. He also attended the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and obtained an executive master’s degree in Public Administration.
In 2012, he contested for the Mampong seat on the ticket of the NPP in the 2012 Ghanaian general elections and won.He also served as a Member of parliament for Mampong between 2008 and 2016. He contested in the NPP’s presidential primaries in 2014. He lost the bid to represent the party in 2015 parliamentary primaries. In the Annual National Delegates Conference 2022, Mr Nimoh predicted surprises of seeing new faces in the leadership of the NPP. He has in recent times joined the race for the NPP flagbearership for the 2024 elections.
Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku
Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku is an economist and a member of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Parliament of the 4th Republic of Ghana. He is a member of the New Patriotic Party. He was the Member of Parliament for the Offinso North constituency in the fourth parliament of the fourth Republic of Ghana
Apraku was Minister for Regional Cooperation and NEPAD in John Kufuor’s administration from 2003 to 2006. He also served as the Minister of Trade and Industry under Kufour from 2001 to 2003. In 2008, he was appointed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Council of Ministers as ECOWAS Commissioner for Macro economic Policy and Economic Research where he was responsible for Multilateral surveillance mechanism which involves regular assessment through joint surveillance mission of the economies of ECOWAS members’ state to ascertain whether the convergences criteria are being met and provide economic and statistical data for member sate and help them attain the convergence criteria and the ECOWAS single currency. He is also liaises with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund [IMF], African Development Bank among other financial institution to support the development of ECOWAS regions. Dr. Apraku has had an extensive and successful professional career in the both private public sector.
Dr Apraku was first voted into parliament on 7th January 1997 to represent his constituency. He polled 10,456 votes out of the 21,428 valid votes cast representing 37.80%.[9] He contested against Nana Oduro-Baah an NDC member who polled 10,257 votes representing 37.10%, Manu Yaw Joseph an PNC member who polled 358 votes representing 1.30% and Emmanuel Kwame Boakye an IND member who polled 357 votes representing 1.30%.[9]Dr. Apraku was the personal spokesman of Prof.Adu Boahen from 1991 to 1996. He was the reelected on 7 January 2001 after he emerged winner of the 2000 Ghanaian General Elections and polled 13,160 votes out of the 21,543 valid votes cast representing 61.00%. He was also re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Offinso North Constituency of the Asante Region in the 2004 Ghanaian general elections with a sum total votes of 13,389 representing 50.30% of the total votes cast.He was among the 17 aspirants who contested in 2007 for the slot of flag-bearer of the New Patriotic Party, going into the 2008 election
Boakye Agyarko
Boakye Kyeremateng Agyarko is an economist. He was the vice president of the Bank of New York. He was the former Minister for Energy in Ghana.
After graduating from the University of Ghana in 1980, Agyarko did his mandatory national service at the Ghana Union Nation of Students as the National Coordinator. When the national service ended in 1981, he was employed as a junior economist with Management and Investment Consultants in Accra. He worked there till 1984 where he was forced to flee Ghana due to an attempt on his life. After a failed coup d’etat led by Lance Corporal Halidu Giwa and Sergeant Abdul Malik, the military high command assumed that he was part of coup plotters. This was due to his high political activism and criticism of the economic policies adopted by the country’s military leaders led by Jerry John Rawlings. He was arrested by men from the Ghana Armed Forces who took him to the Air Force Base at Burma Camp in Accra. He was shot at the base and sent to the 37 Military Hospital morgue. At the morgue, a nurse realized that he was not dead and rushed him to the emergency services where he was operated upon by Henry Koku Akpalu. After the surgery, he fled the country through the help of a friend, Monsieur Le Veloire, and his two sisters. Agyarko emigrated to the United States as a political refugee and enrolled at Pace University.
After graduating from Pace University, he was employed by the Bank of New York, the oldest bank in the United States. He spent over twenty years at the bank and worked at senior levels in various departments of the Bank.The positions he held included Operations Management and Analysis, Product Development, Global Network Managements, International Banking and Asset Management, and the Year 2000 (Y2K) Management Group.
He had oversight responsibilities of various sectors and departments notably in Trade, Finance, Loan Syndications, Asset Securitization, and Structured Finance. He was the principal negotiator on the setting up of the Bank of New York in Mexico. While working in New York he became a member of the American Economic Association and an Associate Member of the American Institute of Bankers. He rose through the ranks of the bank and became Vice President and Head of Global Network Management for the Americans in the Investment Management and Services Division. He left the bank after 22 years so he could contest elections in Ghana. While in the US he wrote a weekly column in The Statesman Newspaper titled Letter from America from 1993 through 1998.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is an economist and former central banker who serves as the 5th Vice President of Ghana in the 4th Ghanaian Republic. He assumed office on 7 January 2017 as Vice President of Ghana. Mahamudu Bawumia is an economist, banker, and vice president of Ghana.
Dr Bawumia was a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, until his nomination as the vice presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2008, standing alongside presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo. He also ran as the NPP vice-presidential candidate in the 2012 general elections and was the lead witness for the petitioners in the 2012/2013 Presidential Election Petition which challenged the declaration of John Mahama as winner of the election.
Between 1996 and 2000, Bawumia served as an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, USA, where he also received the Young Researcher Award in 1998. He was listed in “Who is Who Among America’s Teachers’ in 1999. He has also published two books on monetary policy and economic development. Dr Bawumia returned to Ghana in 2000 to work as an economist at the Bank of Ghana. He rose from Senior Economist to Head of Department, and subsequently as Special Assistant to the Governor of the Bank. President John Kufuor appointed Bawumia as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana in June 2006.
At the Bank of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia: Served as Head of the Monetary Policy and Financial Stability Department, he was part of the team that designed and implemented the inflation-targeting framework that continues to guide monetary policy and the workings of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of Ghana. The inflation-targeting framework established reduced inflation from over 40% in 2000 to 10.2% by 2007 (i.e., before the oil price shock of 2007/2008) while maintaining relative exchange rate stability.
He was part of the team that was instrumental in designing and implementing policy initiatives such as the abolition of the secondary reserve requirements and the opening up of the banking sector to competition. This resulted in a major increase in the availability of credit to the private sector from 12.5% of GDP in 2001 to 28.5% of GDP by 2008.
Led Bank of Ghana’s technical negotiation team and was on the government team that negotiated with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund since 2001 through HIPC and PRGF. Partly as a result of these negotiations, Ghana by 2007 successfully ended its dependence on IMF assistance.