According to the former Central Regional Minister, tensions within the party which have surfaced since their disappointing loss in the 2016 general elections, were being fueled by the uncertainty about the contents of the report which was compiled detailing the reasons for their defeat.

[contextly_sidebar id=”tDAuA6adsXW8pTdr9Iht3D3Zts7j79am”]The National leadership of the party tasked a special Committee led by Prof. Kwesi Botchwey to tour the country to listen to concerns of party members.

However, since the Committee completed its work, various supposed leaked contents of their final report have added to the animosity within the party, despite the attempts by several senior officials to brand the document as fake.

According to Ricketts-Hagan, releasing the report only to the members of the NDC would help ease the unrest that appears to be building within the opposition party as it seeks to reorganize ahead of the polls in 2020.

“I will appeal to our leadership that I think it’s about time that the Dr. Kwesi Botchway report which is under lock and key, is released to the party. I’m not talking about making it public, but  all the faithful of the 275 constituencies should see this report so that no one would have to travel anywhere, passing on sentiments already in the report.  It is creating so many problems that rather it is distracting us from what we should be doing,” he said.

Ricketts Hagan was speaking on Citi FM‘s news analysis programme, The Big Issue, in response to a statement issued by the ten regional chairmen of the NDC who had paid a visit to former President John Dramani Mahama to convey the desire from party members within their areas for him to run for President in 2020.

Hasty endorsements could hurt Mahama’s ambitions – Ricketts-Hagan

He stated that the decision by the chairmen to publicly declare their backing for the former president was unfortunate “especially when we are trying to heal after such disastrous elections where blame is being apportioned to everyone.”

Releasing the Botchwey report, he believes, would render actions such as theirs unnecessary as the sentiments and wishes of the party’s grassroots would be known by all.

“We are looking at rebuilding and reinvigorating the party. We have people who say that they are chairmen and are going to express the sentiments of their people.  Dr. Kwesi Botchway’s report was supposed to have captured all the sentiments that were out there, including the feelings, thoughts and beliefs of the people as to why the elections went wrong. These sentiments that the chairmen went to express to John Mahama, if the report was available to many people, many of us would have known about them and we would not need anyone to express them to anyone for us.”

A member of the Kwesi Botchwey Committee, Nii Lante Vanderpuye, recently reiterated the party’s stance that it will not release the report as it could spell doom for the NDC.

He maintained that, recent media reports serializing the supposed leaked document were just attempts by political opponents to force the NDC to release the full report, a tactic he says will not succeed.

However, Ricketts-Hagan expressed dissatisfaction with the secretive nature of the report, arguing that it was important for members of the party to know and learn from the mistakes that cost them the last elections.

He suggested that the recommendations that were made could be left out as they could be capitalized on by opposition parties.

“We have commissioned a report to be done, and most of us don’t know what’s in it. We have people going round with excerpts of the report trying to do reconciliation. I’m calling respectfully on the leadership of our party to reconsider and release the report especially before we go into the branch elections. So that we’ll be able to know what went wrong and we don’t repeat the mistakes.  They can take out the recommendations. I can understand that the recommendations in the hands of our opponents could be damaging  in the sense that it’s out of those that we’ll have our strategies,” he said.

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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According to him, releasing the report could be disastrous for the party.

[contextly_sidebar id=”IhmZJte07ZzIFSAnGaoyNQMwHbBBKn5O”]He maintained that, recent media reports serializing the supposed leaked document were just attempts by political opponents to force the NDC to release the full report, a tactic he says will not succeed.

“What these people are doing, is communist inferior tactics to compel us to put the report out there. I can say as a member of the Committee that anything that possibly will induce us, coerce us or push us to put the original report out will spell the doom of the party, and I will never recommend that,” Nii Lante Vanderpuye said on Eyewitness News on Wednesday.

“We’ve used wisdom and intelligence to craft a report that critically diagnoses the problems of the party. We’ve done an executive summary which has been made available for public consumption, but the report itself is an in-house medicine to heal us. It’s for us and our own consumption and not for somebody else. When the NPP did their report, they did they put it out in the public domain? Why are they expecting us to put ours in the public domain? We will never do that.  They are doing this to get us to put out the original report.”

His comments come hours after the NDC’s General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia, rubbished the documents being serialised, describing them as fake.

The NDC recently announced that it had scrapped its biometric register, and will be returning to the manual process of registering members of the party.

The party’s National Chairman, Kofi Portuphy, stated that the National Executive Committee had unanimously agreed to scrap the register based on recommendations made by the Kwesi Botchwey Committee.

The Odododiodioo Legislator, Nii Lante, called on members of the party who have challenges with any of the recommendations made in the executive summary of the report, to go to the party’s headquarters.

“The actual report will not come, and if you have any contentions with the issues in the executive summary and think it is wrong, you get to the party headquarters and they’ll open the page that has the recommendation for you to look at and take a decision. I don’t think there’s any law in this land that will force the NDC to put out the report and we’ll not do it,” Nii Lante said.

“The Executive summary from the Committee recommended that, we take a look at our biometric registration and the party has taken steps towards that.”

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Releasing Botchwey report would spell doom for NDC – Nii Lante appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Speaking to Citi News’ Fred Djabanor, Mr. Vandepuijie categorically stated that, both the content and structure of the said report are entirely different from the original one in the NDC’s possession.

[contextly_sidebar id=”fuh2rprLYygDiqHd7fTxOW64jEiQuRg2″]“No, this can never be the report of the committee that I worked on. It has some resemblance of the executive summary, but then it is not. What the person has done is picking from here and there and putting it together to let you have the resemblance of the report.”

“I am seeing some pages which are not the exact pages of the executive summary. You can even see from the pages that people made photocopies of what they had, and decided to put it together without having the exact document. They ended up messing up the whole thing. This is not our report. I know the pages from where we did the analysis.”

His comments come hours after the General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, also pooh-poohed the report, saying the documents are fake, because the party has not published the committee’s report.

“We’ve taken a position that Kwesi Botchwey’s report is meant for internal consumption so it has not been published anywhere. So any commentary that is being run or any alleged capturing of Botchwey’s report and serialization cannot represent any genuine document coming from NDC,” Mr. Asiedu Nketia said.

Mahama laughs off supposed Kwesi Botchwey report

Former President John Mahama, who was amused by the recent publications, also took to social media platform Twitter, to make a mockery of it.

“It appears ‘KB report has been adopted by some media as the new handbook for any challenge facing Gh…. In the event of crisis, open any page and quote. Lol,” he tweeted.

NDC quiet on Kwesi Botchwey

The leadership of the NDC has been tight-lipped over findings of the report which was submitted in June 2017, after months of touring and holding consultative meetings with interest groups and individuals across the country.

However, some media outlets including the Daily Guide newspaper and Accra-based Joy FM in series of news stories, have made public what they claim to be some findings of the committee.

The publications, among others, have pointed to Stan Dogbe and Elvis Afyiie Ankrah as John Mahama’s undoing.

It also indicated that, the report had cited some officials at the Flagstaff House during Mahama’s tenure of shortchanging journalists by cutting down budgeted stipends for the presidential press corps and pocketing the rest.

We won’t publish Kwesi Botchwey’s report – Asiedu Nketia

Mr. Asiedu Nketia has said that the NDC is not ready to make the true report of the committee public.

He says the report is only meant to be used internally by the party.

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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Kwesi Botchwey c’ttee member Nii Lantey, rubbishes ‘leaked’ report appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

That is the position of the party’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who said its only meant for internal consumption.

“We’ve taken a position that Kwesi Botchwey’s report is meant for internal consumption, so it has not been published anywhere,” he said in an interview with Citi News‘ Umaru Sanda Amadu on Wednesday.

[contextly_sidebar id=”jjuayYnMPgygVyyB0G5AOvS5GFj4VW2K”]He made the remark on the back of some documents which some media houses have claimed to be a leaked report with findings from the Kwesi Botchwey committee.

The leadership of the NDC has been tight-lipped about the findings of the report, which was submitted in June 2017, after months of touring and holding consultative meetings with interest groups and individuals across the country.

However, some media outlets including the Daily Guide newspaper and Accra-based Joy FM in series of news stories, have made public what they claim to be some findings of the committee.

The publications, among others, have pointed to Stan Dogbe and Elvis Afyiie Ankrah as John Mahama’s undoing.

It also indicated that, the report had cited some officials at the Flagstaff House during Mahama’s tenure of shortchanging journalists by cutting down budgeted stipends for the presidential press corps and pocketing the rest.

But Asiedu Nketa in the interview rubbished the leaked report.

“…Any commentary that is being run or any alleged capturing of Botchwey’s report and serialization cannot represent any genuine document coming from NDC.”

When probed further on why the party has decided not to publish the report, Mr. Asiedu Nketia said “Nobody publishes a management advise in the media, it doesn’t happen anywhere. Those demanding for it are poor managers.”

“If you go and fabricate things and put them there hoping that the fabrication will force people to publish what the truth is, then you will be deceiving yourself. There is a party official position about how the report should be handled,” he stressed.

He also accused the NPP of using the report to divert attention from important national issues.

“I have also observed that it looks like the NPP government wants to use some fake Botchwey report to divert the attention of Ghanaians from the hardships that they are going through. So it’s like they are always using something purporting to be coming from the Botchwey’s report to divert attention of any major issue that seems to be indicting the government,” he added.

Mahama laughs off supposed Kwesi Botchwey report

Former President John Mahama, who was amused by the recent publications purporting to be from the committee’s report, also took to social media platform Twitter, to make a mockery of it.

“It appears ‘KB report has been adopted by some media as the new handbook for any challenge facing Gh…. In the event of crisis, open any page and quote. Lol,” he tweeted.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

The post We won’t publish Kwesi Botchwey’s report – Asiedu Nketia appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

[contextly_sidebar id=”6vrMpMcRgij9VDvYFEnRK6TShB56ZQ65″]John Mahama in a sniggery comment on his twitter account on Tuesday night, said the report appeared to have been adopted as a “new handbook for addressing Ghana’s challenges.”

“It appears ‘KB report has been adopted by some media as the new handbook for any challenge facing Gh…. In the event of crisis, open any page and quote. Lol,” he tweeted.

The leadership of the NDC has been tight-lipped over findings of the report which was submitted in June 2017, after months of touring and holding consultative meetings with interest groups and individuals across the country.

However, some media outlets including the Daily Guide newspaper and Accra-based Joy FM in series of news stories, have made public what is claimed to be some findings of the report.

The publications, among others, have pointed to Stan Dogbe and Elvis Afyiie Ankrah as John Mahama’s undoing.

It also indicated that, the report had cited some officials at the Flagstaff House during Mahama’s tenure of shortchanging journalists by cutting down budgeted stipends for the presidential press corps and pocketing the rest.

But John Mahama, who seem concerned about the developments in the media appears to be laughing them off as untrue.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Mahama laughs off supposed Kwesi Botchwey report appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The England international has joined Liverpool on a long-term deal, believed to be worth around £25m, after passing a medical at Melwood.

Lallana made 250 appearances during his time at Southampton, becoming club captain in 2012, and hopes to play a key role as the Reds pursue silverware next season.

“I’m so excited for the next chapter of my career, coming to a special club like Liverpool,” he told the club’s official website. “I’m quite humbled and I just can’t wait to get started.

“Hopefully I can settle in quickly, and I will give it my best throughout the whole time I’m here. I hope I can add something to the team and hopefully we can win trophies while I’m here, because that’s why I’m here – for success.”

The 26-year-old becomes Liverpool’s second signing of the summer, joining Rickie Lambert who also arrived from Southampton, while a deal in principle has been agreed for Bayer Leverkusen’s Emre Can.

Manager Brendan Rodgers is confident that Lallana has all the attributes needed to become a success at Anfield.

“We are delighted to have secured the services of one of the Premier League’s top talents in signing Adam Lallana,” said Rodgers.

“What is apparent about Adam is that his character is on a par with his talent.

“He is an exceptional young man and someone who has a love for the game – and, most importantly, a desire to progress and improve.

“Adam is motivated by being the best he can be and being part of something special. We believe he fits right in with what we are trying to do at Liverpool.

“We have seen, over the past two seasons in the Barclays Premier League, he has a tactical awareness to adapt to what is required of him and to put the team above his personal ambitions.

“He has leadership skills and personal qualities that make him a special commodity and I am delighted we have acted decisively to make sure he is wearing a Liverpool shirt next season.

“Adam is aware there will be great competition for places at this club and he is hungry to improve further. We are confident he will fit perfectly with the culture we have at Liverpool.

“I’m excited about working with Adam and helping him to progress even further.”

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Source: Sky Sports

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