By Christiana Afua Nyarko
Accra, May 9, GNA – All is about set for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the largest opposition Party, to hold presidential and parliamentary primaries across all 275 constituencies in the country on Saturday, May 13, 2023.
The primaries will set the tone for the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections in December.
A total of 32 constituencies have been cleared to hold the primaries in the Greater Accra Region.
One of them is the Shai-Osudoku Constituency where the incumbent Member of Parliament, Linda Obenewaa Akweley Ocloo will be battling two others; Professor Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte, a former Presidential Staffer and a former Executive Director of the National Service Scheme and David Tetteh Assumeng, a former Member of Parliament for the constituency from 2005 to 2017.
Linda Obenewaa Akweley Ocloo
Akweley Ocloo is in her second term in office and seeking to be elected for the third time should she be retained at the upcoming primaries.
Born on the 21st of February 1979 at Anyaa-Abasa, Akweley Ocloo was a Banker and an Insurer before she contested for the position of Member of Parliament for Shai-Osudoku,
She worked for the Standard Chartered Bank as a Client Service Person and Branch Secretary. She was also at the Electricity Company of Ghana as a Personal Assistant to Managing Director and at Old Mutual Life, formerly Provident Life Insurance as a Clients Service Consultant and Acting Manager.
She attended the University of Cape Coast where she got a Degree in Business Administration in the year 2000. In that same year, she bagged a Diploma in Banking from the Cambridge Academy in Accra and later attained a diploma in Insurance from the National Insurance College at Airport Accra in 2004.
Madam Ocloo came into the limelight of politics when she lost her husband, Desmond William Ocloo on March 4, 2016, in a road crash, the then NDC Parliamentary Candidate for the same constituency.
She was then chosen to stand in place of her late husband, and she won with over 13,000 votes in the general elections. In 2020, she won a second term.
She is a member of the Government Assurance Committee in Parliament with 24 other members and a member of the Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committees of Parliament.
She is hailed by the minority leadership in Parliament as one of the few distinguished female lawmakers in the 8th Parliament of Ghana.
Madam Ocloo is confident that based on her achievements in health – the building of a health facility at Odumse and Agortor (two neighbourhoods in her constituency), in education and rural electrification, water and sanitation, the delegates would give her the green light to continue serving them.
Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte
Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte is a former Presidential Staffer and a former Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS). He also served as the Policy Advisor to Former President Mahama during his administration between 2013 to early 2017.
The astute academic, a native of the Constituency and a leading member of the NDC was recently promoted to the rank of an associate Professor at the University of Ghana.
Prior to this, he had served on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Jonson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon in Canada.
Dr Kpessa-Whyte had a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from the University of Ghana in 2001; a Master of Arts, Political Science (International Relations) from the Department of Political Science at Brock University of Saint Catherines in Ontario, Canada in 2005.
He had Ph.D. in Political Science (Comparative Public Policy), Department of Political Science, McMaster University at Hamilton in Ontario, Canada in 2009.
In 2012, he was adjudged “The Most promising Young Researcher” by the School of Social Sciences, University of Ghana, Legon.
He was one of the representatives of the petitioner in the ‘strongroom’ of the Electoral Commission during the 2020 general elections and acted as a second witness for the petitioner who was cross-examined.
Dr Kpessa-Whyte is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and taught in various undergraduate and graduate courses relating to the study of African politics.
David Tetteh Assumeng
David Tetteh Assumeng is a former Member of Parliament for Shai-Osudoku Constituency.
He entered Parliament to represent the constituency on the Party’s ticket on 7th January 2005.
He, however, lost the NDC primaries in 2015.
Mr. Assumeng was born on 10th September 1961 and hails from Osudoku in the Greater-Accra Region.
He is a product of the University of Ghana and also obtained Masters in Governance and Leadership from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) in 2008.
Prior to his political career, Mr Assumeng was a Youth Co-ordinator of the National Youth Council at the Ada West District.
Assumeng lost to the late Desmond Wiliam Ocloo in the NDC primaries in November 2015 and staging a comeback this year.
The contest is expected to be ‘hot” with some security experts and poll analysts describing the constituency as an election flash point.
GNA