WHO IS MUSTAPHA ABDUL HAMID?

To some people who will be reading this, you will be wondering why I have decided to bother you with someone you do not know or might not have heard of at all. If you are Ghanaian then I will advice you take some time to know this man because he might one day be a presidential aspirant on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Mustapha Hamid is a lecturer at the Department of Religion and Human Values of the University of Cape Coast. He has been there since he helped Nana Akuffo Addo, the NPP flagbearer for the 2008 elections to lose the presidential bid. He had his O' and A' level education at Bawku Senior High and Tamale Senior High schools respectively. Mustapha then furthered his education to the University of Cape Coast where he had his first degree and second degree respectively. He also holds a Masters in Communication from the University of Ghana.

During his university years, Mustapha swam into the waters of politics because of an incident he witnessed in his childhood. He says he was at home one day when some soldiers whom he claims were sent by former president J.J.Rawlings came to arrest his daddy. To him, he never understood the reason for this as a child but this incident forced his father into exile who later returned home only after the former president had left office. This made him vow to get as much education as possible to one day help in seeing Mr. Rawlings out of office.

In his years at Cape Vars, Mustapha Hamid joined an equivalence of today's TESCON NPP to see to the fruitation of his dream. This helped him take advantage of whatever opportunity that came his way.

He became the general secretary to the local NUGS and later an SRC President of UCC even when he was a graduate student competing with opponents who were undergraduate students in a university where 80% are undergrads.

Mustapha Hamid loves to describe himself as a bold, assertive person rather than a humble person because he thinks leaders must be bold and courageous. Probably from his words one might infer that President Atta-Mills is not the best of leaders.

As a Muslim, he does not repudiate polygamy implying he does not totally rule out the possibility of one day getting married in addition to his current wife whom he has four kids with.

He is not be blamed for his high sense of appeal and one could easily fall in love with this man meeting him for the first time. He is indeed a great philosopher for the NPP and a potential leader of this party and maybe Ghana.

Mr. Hamid comes from the northern part of Ghana with his father a Busanga and mother a Mamprusi. His parents got divorced when he was only six years old and he lived with his father afterwards.

He believes Northeners are not violent people but rather a group of individuals who stand for what they believe in and that is why greedy politicians tend to use them for their selfish gains. He shares the thought that because colonial lazy people wanted to continuously use the Northeners on their farms, they deprived them for so many years as about 80 years and this has left his people and my brothers and sisters behind other ethnic groups in Ghana. Education to him is the solution to the problems of the north and the growing grievances of political 'foot soldiers'.

He is currently a member of the Nana Addo campaign team. We all can learn a lot from this man, he loved school, he is a leader and is bold to defend his believes.

This was how Mr. Hamid chose to describe himself on a radio program 'crossroad' on ATL Fm.

Update: Mustapha Hamid is currently serving as the Minister of Information for the AKufo-Addo led NPP government.