Akan Constituency race to be competitive
The Akan Constituency in the Kadjebi District in the Volta Region is predicted to be a hot spot in the forthcoming parliamentary election.
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The constituency has been represented in Parliament by the current Volta Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr John Kwadzo Gyapong, for two terms from 1992-1996 and 1996-2000, and won by an independent candidate from 2000-2004, to be followed again by Mr Gyapong from 2004-2008 for another four years.
The incumbent Member of Parliament (MP), Mr Joseph Kwadzo Ofori, took over the seat on the NDC ticket for four years from 2008-2012 and went on for another four years as an independent candidate from 2012-2016 and is contesting as an independent candidate against Mr Kofi Adjei Ntim, a former Kadjebi District Chief Executive for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and Mr Aziz Muniru as the NDC candidate.
In the 2012 elections, there were eight contestants in all, with four as independent candidates: one for the NDC, one for the NPP, one for People’s National Convention (PNC) and one for the Convention People’s Party (CPP).
This time round, there are only three candidates that have showed up: the incumbent independent candidate, the NPP candidate and the NDC candidate.
Each of the candidates has much to claim in the constituency, especially the incumbent independent candidate who has occupied the seat for the past eight years and has dished out some development projects to some communities.
The NPP candidate also achieved a lot during his tenure as district chief executive and has won an accolade as “adwuma wura.”
The NDC candidate is resting on the “usual magnanimity” of voters in the Volta Region that he could or may be an obvious choice and as an engineer who out of volition has executed some projects for the constituency.
He is also strengthened by the fact that the regional chairman of the party comes from the constituency.
However, for this term, the battle front has reduced in terms of contestants but enlarged in terms of floating voters, because the number of independent candidates have reduced from four to one, leaving the previous total number of voters for independent candidates of 4,540 votes, excluding those of the PNC and CPP totaling 1,334 votes.
A total of 5,874 votes are outstanding to be harnessed by any of the three contestants and that makes it a strong challenge for any of them to win the votes because the Akan Constituency is a highly cosmopolitan one and also multi-religious.
Therefore, it is expected that forces of religion, ethnicity and other factors will come into play in the determination through the ballot box on the voting day.
The NDC candidate is a Muslim, the NPP candidate is a Christian and the incumbent independent candidate also a Christian.
So the votes may be divided between Moslems and Christians and on the other hand between Akans and the settler communities in the constituency because the NPP and the independent candidates are both Akans and the NDC a Zongo candidate.