Between 2010 and 2012, I was part of a survey team to assess the impact of Ghana’s longest-serving legislator, Alban Bagbin in the constituency that gifted him to the nation.
I led another team, using mainly students from University of Development Studies and the outcomes were the same: he was responsible for the education of almost half of the people in his hometown especially, every single household (almost) has someone who was sponsored by Bagbin at a point in education.
He started a scholarship for everyone who got Teachers or Nursing Training, it wasn’t political, it was open to everyone.
Almost every household we went to, myself and Newman Dotse, editor of the erstwhile Citizens Newspaper for the first one had someone who had benefited from Bagbin’s education support.
Interestingly, as the people get educated, they move to NPP because they hold this notion that NPP is for the educated while the NDC is for the uneducated.
They don’t care about the fact that an NDC MP made the diffrence in their lives, they opted to associate with the party of elite because they belong in that constituency.
Bagbin was able to maintain that seat for so long because of the direct investment he made in educating his people but what that investment failed to do was to win them over to the NDC.
The more people get educated in Nadowli, the stronger the NPP became. This phenomenon seems to apply in many part of the Northern Region, NDC suffers when the people get educated.
If you don’t know why the NPP is becoming stronger in the Northern part of Ghana, you know it now: the people are getting educated.
This is why the NDC need to re-strategise not only for 2020 elections but beyond, because its very existence in the near future is bleak. Whether they like it or not, Ghana is going to see an increase in literacy rate.
The party has to adapt and and change this perception to survive the changes in our voter demography.
Out of 72 tertiary institutions in 2020, NPP won 69, NDC won 3. What does that tell you?
As for Nadowli, I won’t be surprised if the NPP win the seat in the 2020 elections because of the current profile of the constituency and the fact that the man who held them to the NDC wouldn’t be standing again.
Have you realised that of all the people who contested Mahama, Bagbin is the only one who won a constituency? That was his constituency. If you go to Nadowli and measure the impact of Bagbin by just what you see, roads, hospitals and what not, even though he has some successes in those areas, you’d be mistaken: he invested in the minds of his people
That though has become a bad omen for the NDC, the NPP are becoming stronger by the day: perhaps strong enough to win it now.