General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has reiterated that the opposition party will not be part of Peace FM’s Morning Show ‘Kokrokoo’ until their demands are met.
According to him, the NDC has had an 8-month running battle with the show’s production team on the need to dispense with the services of the party’s former Central Regional Chairman, Allotey Jacobs, as their representative on the show, since the latter has ceased serving their interest; but with no success.
Speaking on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, Asiedu Nketia maintained that the current situation with Allotey Jacobs still representing the opposition NDC does not favor their cause, hence their call for the panel restructuring.
“We have had lengthy conversations with management of the station about Allotey Jacobs when we observed that his commentaries and conduct on the morning show do not favor the NDC.
“The arrangement with the Peace FM morning show production team is that NDC has two representatives on Wednesdays as against one rep from the NPP and one neutral person and then on Fridays, the NPP will have their two reps against one rep from the NDC and also a neutral person to grace to program, but we have realised that Allotey Jacobs does not represent the interest of the NDC anymore whenever he appears on the show on Wednesdays and we wanted some changes in order to complement this longstanding procedure we have all complied with,” he explained.
Comparing the scenario with a football team, General Mosquito as popularly called said, it is unheard of to see a referee insist on choosing a player for a particular team in a major contest.
“It is the coach’s responsibility to pick his own team; I have never seen anywhere in a football match where the referee will select players for a particular team. As a referee, you are supposed to stay neutral,” he added.
He averred that the host of Peace FM’s Morning Show has the power to refuse to work with any NDC member who comes on the show to misbehave, but added that the host cannot select anyone to represent the party on the show.
“As a master of your program, if we send someone to your show and the person misbehaves, you complain to us that you cannot work with that individual, following which we will then replace that person. But you cannot just take a cursory look around, settle on one particular person, and insist that he or she must definitely appear on your show, simply because you don’t have that power.
“We want to do away with the services of Allotey Jacobs because he does not represent NDC and replace him with another person so that there can be two NDC members on the show and so if the host insists that Allotey is the one he wants on the show, he should be there as a social commentator and then give the NDC two slots on the show. We don’t care if Allotey will be on the show alongside the two NDC members,” he charged.
Sounding proverbial, the NDC Chief Scribe added “there is no way we will allow someone to force down our throat, a food we detest or allergic to.”
