The Propaganda Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is enraged by a report alleging that over 10,000 members of the party in the Northern Region have defected to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). NPP executives in Tamale made the announcement linking the alleged defections to what they claim was the Mills administration’s failure to provide jobs for the youth, which was broadcast on Joy FM. But Richard Quashigah told Joy News’s Sampson Lardy Ayenini that the story is a complete falsehood. “There were no such defections in the first place... 10,000 people is enough a good crowd for the Accra Sports Stadium.” He fouled the Joy FM reporter for not doing due diligence on the story before going public with what he said was mere hearsay, and also suspected mischief on the part of the opposition NPP “who wants to do vile propaganda”. He said the NDC’s Northern Regional Secretary, Imoro Issifu Alhassan whom the said story claimed had attributed the defections to President Mills’ failure to tackle job problems, has also denied that those were his words. He said the regional secretary was asked about stories of defections from NDC to NPP “and his response was that, well, there are challenges with the youth, and some of the challenges had to do with employment, the reason for which probably there may be defections here and there,[and] there may be semblance of youth agitations here and there”. He stressed that the name of the president was not mentioned as the reason for any defection. Richard Quashigah however admitted that about 20 young men at a suburb of Tamale wanted jobs and were introduced to the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) for bloc-farming but they were unhappy with that. “And I understand the NPP regional youth organizer heard about it and decided to cash in and invited these 20 people, gave them some money and decided to make a story out of it.” Story by Isaac Essel/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana