Flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, has chastised the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Alhaji Collins Dauda, for claiming the NPP discriminates against Muslims.
According to the NPP leader, the claims are illogical.
Collins Dauda has incurred the wrath of the NPP for asserting they will discriminate against Muslims when they win power.
“People from the UP [United Party] tradition are not our friends and such we should not be in bed with them. They are people the Zongo community cannot rely on… They are like lions, no matter what, they will not have good intentions for us,” Alhaji Dauda said while addressing National Democratic Congress supporters in the Eastern Region.
[contextly_sidebar id=”ohwVwnHEDnadjLjBTsgiaYNlkMSnyF5w”]The Minister said “these are same people who are begging for votes from the Zongo community. We should be very careful of these people. They treated our ancestors as aliens and today they are pretending to be our friends.”
But Nana Addo while addressing residents of Adabokrom in the Bia East Constituency in the Western Region, said the claims are untrue.
“I have heard one of their leaders saying me Akufo-Addo, who has a Muslim as my running mate, does not like Muslims, and that I will discriminate against Muslims when I win the elections. Is this possible? There is no logic in this kind of statement,” he said.
Nana Addo further charged that “everyone who comes with the language of division or tribalism is one who has no love for Ghana. Please, do not pay heed to those who come to you with such language. Chase those kinds of people away.”
Nana Addo is currently on a five-day campaign tour of the Western Region.
Dauda’s comment mischievous
Mustapha Hamid, a spokesperson of Nana Akufo-Addo also described on Eyewitness News the comments as mischievous and a “hasty generalization.”
According to Mustapha Hamid, “it is not correct to seek to do mischief in order to divide people for political purposes. If it is not mischief and it is genuine ignorance that too is not allowed. A minister of state cannot display such crux ignorance on the public space and therefore it is very unfortunate and it shows the low levels to which our politics has sunk especially with the NDC.”
“What people did in the Nkrumah era does not reflect the reality of our days. After all NPP has been in power before, we’ve been here for eight years under Kufuor, did we expel any Muslim? Are we not the ones who enforced the welfare of Muslims in this country and made a Muslim the first Muslim Vice President of our Republic?”
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin