The Vice Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, has underlined the main opposition party’s resolve to “break the corruption that has engulfed the country under the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP)”.

Addressing NDC supporters at Ayinase in the Ellembelle Constituency on Tuesday, September 24, 2024, as part of the second phase of her three-day campaign tour of the Western Region, Prof Opoku-Agyemang urged the people to seize the opportunity on election day “to break the hunger, suffering, the poverty and the high unemployment in the country”.

She said this playing on the words of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) slogan ‘break the eight’.

"The Women’s Development Bank is coming, the National Apprenticeship Programme is coming and the NDC is also bringing you the Big Push to create jobs," the academic added.

Prof Opoku-Agyemang argued when the NDC was in government, the quality of education was high and all secondary school students were in school at the same time.

“There was also certainty about the academic calendar,” she said.

She observed in spite of the government’s Free Senior High School (FSHS) rhetoric, secondary education had become costly as parents and guardians now pay more for the upkeep and academic needs of their children in school.

Prof Opoku-Agyemang said Ghana needed a reset and, therefore, urged electorates to vote for the NDC’s John Dramani Mahama in the presidential election to enable him fix the mess created by the government.

She said the country had been run aground by the NPP government, defaulted on its loan repayments and that it would take the experience and hard work of Mr Mahama to navigate Ghana out of the mess created by the NPP government.

“Mr Mahama is a hardworking and trusted leader with a solid record of achievements. He built schools, markets, hospitals, roads and many other infrastructure projects across the country when he led the country and he will do it again when elected,” Prof Opoku-Agyemang declared.

The governing NPP, led by Vice President and flagbearer Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, seeks a historic end to the two-term or eight-year political cycle via victory during the December 7 general elections.

While it would have been arguably significant for the NPP to be number eight on the ballot paper for the upcoming election given their ‘break the eight’ slogan, by a twist of fate, it was rather the NDC who took that number during a draw at the Electoral Commission (EC) Headquarters on Friday, September 20. 

On social media, supporters of the NDC observed the humour in the NPP losing the eighth position to the NDC. They asserted the NDC would break the NPP’s ‘break the eight’ agenda.