Ekumfi NDC chairman resigns, joins NPP

The Ekumfi constituency chairman of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Ekow Esilfie-Buckman, has defected to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) over several unresolved issues in the party.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with OTEC D’S DWABREM Programme,  Mr. Esilfie indicated that his name was even deleted from the register for the party’s parliamentary primaries making him ineligible to cast his vote as chairman.

“There are a whole number of things happening in the party, the regional executives are aware and they are not taking any action, they are not supporting me so I feel that I do not have the support of the regional executives, and for that matter if I continue to be in the party, I don’t know what will happen to me.

“I don’t have the cooperation of the DCE and then the MP as well as a section of the executive members who are seen to be on the side of the MP and the DCE, and so I am unable to operate effectively.”

He added: “[Secondly], party vehicles which were given to the [regional] chairman…were handed over to the MP who also handed them over to the constituency treasurer. Even though the vehicle was given to the chairman in the region, mine was given to the treasurer, such that if I had to go to a meeting in Cape Coast or wherever, I had to join a passenger car and people in the constituency were [asking] why it is that the vehicle which is supposed to be given to the chairman is rather with the constituency treasurer.

“But I said if the constituency treasurer is using the car for the purposes of which it was given to him, fine, so I did not want to fight over it.

“But just a few months ago, the president gave the fishermen outboard motors at a subsidised price and I am also a fisherman, I have a fishing canoe with a crew of 35. The landing beach committee chairman, who represented the DCE on this issue, made me pay GHS 7,000 to him. He said that was the cost of the machine, but when the money was paid to the district assembly, I was not given the machine when [they] were delivered in the district and apart from me, there were four other people in my town who also paid but were not given. When I checked up from the DCE, he did not pick my call and so I asked the chairman who collected my money the reason for my inability to get the outboard motors but he said he was not given any reason. I, therefore, [stated] that I was going to court because something I had paid for, I had not been given.

Source, OTEC FM, Kumasi, story by Eric Asamoah/ protocol and CJ LOUIS