The New Patriotic Party (NPP) plans to profile potential parliamentary candidates early in constituencies without sitting MPs to prevent aspirants from spending heavily on campaigns that may ultimately fail.

Newly elected Third Vice Chairperson of the NPP, Nana Akomea, says the party now has enough time to deliberately assess the demographics of these constituencies before settling on suitable candidates.

He said the approach would be particularly important because the NPP now has more constituencies without sitting MPs.

“But what is essential is the demography. We have a bit of time now to look at the demography of each of the orphan constituencies.”

Nana Akomea said constituency-level demographic reports would help the party determine which type of candidate would have the best chance of winning.

“The constituency party will bring us reports about the demography, and they would suggest that for this constituency, if we get a candidate from this demography, it will help us.”

He said making that assessment early would prevent potential aspirants from investing heavily in campaigns before the party determines who is best positioned to win.

“So when that determination is done early, then somebody who is not from that demography will not go and waste time to go and campaign, spend money, and then later on you decide that oh, he may not win.”

Nana Akomea said such a situation could become more complicated because aspirants would already have built support networks and developed emotional ties to their campaigns.

“But then he’s already invested money. He’s already got followers. His emotions involved.”

He argued that the strategy is not entirely new to the NPP.

“In the NPP going to the 2000 elections, we did the same exercise. We had a lot of constituencies with no sitting MPs, and we decided that the coastal area of Accra, for example, should be reserved for Gas.”

“That is profiling, and so on. So it is not new.”

The difference, he said, is the scale and the deliberate nature of the current exercise.

“It’s that we’re going to do it on a scale that is more deliberate and that is more fulfilling.”

Nana Akomea also linked the strategy to the NPP’s decision to complete its internal reorganisation early.

He said the party had “secured for ourselves the blessing of time” by selecting its flagbearer well ahead of the 2028 elections.

According to him, that early decision has helped reduce internal tensions and created room for the party to focus on parliamentary preparations.

“Now there isn’t any emotion because we’ve already settled that high price. So we’ve composed ourselves.”

He said the party’s next major task is to get its parliamentary strategy right, particularly in constituencies without sitting MPs.

“What we need to do now is to get the parliamentary thing right. There are a lot more orphan constituencies. You don’t want to leave it free for all.”

He said the available time should allow the NPP to be more deliberate about who represents the party in those constituencies.

“Now that we have a bit of time, you can be more deliberate about the people to represent the party in the constituencies.”