Accra, Jan 8, GNA – Chairman of the Tema East constituency branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nene Agbadiagba Ofoe-Teye, has described the death of former Greater Accra regional Minister, Ishmael Ashitey, as the loss of a piece of the soul of the NPP.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on Saturday in Accra, following the death of Mr. Ashitey on Friday, Nene Agbadiagba Ofoe-Teye said the loss was an inconsolable blow to the party as the former Tema East MP was in expendable.
“We in Tema East are inconsolable because we know what this robbery by death has taken away from us. Also to the greater party, it is such a good chunk of its soul that has been taken away,” Nene Ofoe-Teye wrote.
According to him, “The NPP will find it difficult to replace this outstanding thoroughbred NPP stalwart and appointee of New Patriotic Party governments both in the past and in the present.”
Mr Ashitey was said to have taken ill upon returning from the US, where he had gone to visit his wife and children. He was rushed to the International Maritime hospital (IMA) on Friday. However, he did not survive the emergency.
A respected stalwart of the ruling party, who was lacing his boots for the national chair of NPP, Mr. Ishmael Ashitey, is a former Greater Accra regional Chairman of the NPP.
He is also a former NPP MP for Tema East and got elected three times to Parliament on the party’s ticket.
Ishmael Ashitey was a Minister of State in charge of Fisheries having been appointed so by former President John Agyekum Kufuor.
Under President Akufo-Addo, Mr. Ashitey was appointed Greater Accra Regional Minister and was only replaced recently by the current regional Minister, Henry Quartey.
“The pedigree of Mr. Ishmael Ashitey makes his loss a huge one for the NPP as a whole and the Tema East branch of our great party in particular. Where are we going to get his type of dynamism and resourcefulness for the party again?” Nene Agbadiagba Ofoe-Teye asked.
Even so, he sent condolences to the late Regional Minister’s family and to the NPP family as a whole, adding that the Tema East NPP was ready and available to help give him a befitting funeral and burial.
As the longest serving constituency executive committee member, I and others including Daniel Nii Kwartei Titus-Glover, who was at the labour front before travelling to the united kingdom for further studies and a former deputy minister of transport, worked hard to ensure Ismael Ashitey’s victory as MP from 1996 to 2008.
“We were also part of the struggle that made him Greater Accra regional chairman of the new patriotic party because he was a good man. The legacy of Ishmael Ashitey will live on, we promise to ensure that. He himself will live in the best place in our memories forever.”
GNA