New Patriotic Party (NPP) aspiring General Secretary, Sylvester Tetteh, has defended his decision to leave the Ningo Prampram constituency to contest the Bortianor-Ngleshie Amanfro parliamentary seat, describing the move as a strategic decision that ultimately paid off.
Mr Tetteh, who contested Ningo Prampram on the NPP ticket in 2012 and 2016, later switched to Bortianor-Ngleshie Amanfro, where he won the NPP parliamentary primary in 2020 and subsequently secured the parliamentary seat.
Speaking on Adom TV’s Badwam, he insisted that his electoral record in Ningo Prampram remains significant, particularly the 17,122 votes he secured for the NPP in the 2012 parliamentary election.
Contemporary reports described the figure as unprecedented for an NPP parliamentary candidate in the constituency at the time.
“The record I left at Ningo Prampram has not yet been broken in terms of numbers. You can check 2012. The record I made is still the highest in the history of the NPP party,” he said.
Mr Tetteh also rejected suggestions that he lacked a political track record in Ningo Prampram before becoming the party’s parliamentary candidate.
“I’m not a coward. Before I became the parliamentary candidate in Ningo Prampram, I was the constituency secretary. Everyone saw the work I did there,” he stated.
He explained that his subsequent decision to change constituencies was based on strategy, drawing an analogy from football.
“Strategy defines every institution. That’s why when a coach is on the field, he sees who is a striker but at a point may decide to pull him to defence to achieve a result,” he added.
According to him, he was not the only politician to change constituencies as part of a strategic calculation, citing former Salaga MP Boniface Sadick as another example.
“I wasn’t the only person who changed his constituency. The former MP for Salaga, Boniface Saddique, also moved to Madina, and he came to win the seat for the party.”
He further argued that his move to Ningo Prampram was justified by the outcome of the 2020 parliamentary election, when the NPP and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) each secured 137 seats in Parliament.
“It was a strategic decision for the party, and it paid off. In 2020, it was 137–137. If I hadn’t won, it would have ruined this country with the minority in Parliament,” he said.
Mr Tetteh added that not every strategic decision made by a political party is necessarily made public but maintained that the results of the 2020 election demonstrated the importance of his move.
“So, it’s not every strategy that is put out, but my movement, everyone who follows politics in Ghana knows that, judging from the result in 2020, it paid off,” he stated.
