TNR Files
The New Patriotic Party’s acting national chairman, Danquah Smith Butey, has stumbled into a political minefield of his own making and the evidence suggests he is either hopelessly misinformed or deliberately misleading the public.
In a live radio interview on Accra-based Neat FM, Butey sought to deflect credit for the ambitious Accra-Kumasi 176km six-lane expressway away from President John Dramani Mahama’s administration, insisting that the contract was signed by former Roads Minister Francis Asenso-Boakye before the NPP left office.
The claim was meant to paint the project as an NPP legacy, not an NDC manifesto promise.
But when pressed to name the contractor, Butey faltered and then deflected, asking the host if he was “CID” interrogating a suspect. The host, visibly unimpressed, reminded him they were live on air. Butey’s only riposte: “Call Asenso and ask him.”
The inconvenient paper trail. The New Republic has obtained documents that puncture Butey’s narrative entirely. During the 2025 budget presentation, Finance Minister Dr. Ato Forson revealed that Asenso-Boakye the very minister Butey now cites as the signatory had formally petitioned President Mahama to halt the expressway project, urging him instead to focus on rehabilitating the existing Accra-Kumasi highway.
The petition, dated last year, is a matter of parliamentary record.
The same man who allegedly signed the contract is on record opposing its execution. If the contract was truly awarded before the NPP left power, why would its own minister write to the incoming president to stop it? Butey offered no answer.
The contractor vacuum. More damning is Butey’s inability to identify the firm that won the bid. For a $4 billion infrastructure project, the contractor’s name is not a state secret unless the contract was never actually awarded. When pressed, Butey retreated to a defensive posture, insisting the station call Asenso-Boakye to “rescue” him.
The host declined, telling Butey he was “spreading falsehood” and urging him not to soil his “unblemished image.”
What is known. The expressway a six-lane, 198.7km tolled corridor designed to slash travel time from six hours to two is being executed by the engineering department of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), with Chief of Defence Staff General William Agyapong personally monitoring progress. The government has pledged completion within three years, a timeline that has drawn skepticism but also visible early works, including clearing operations.
The political calculus. Butey’s gambit appears to be a pre-emptive effort to deny the NDC a flagship achievement ahead of the 2028 election cycle. But his own party’s parliamentary minority opposed the project’s allocation in the 2025 budget a fact Dr. Forson highlighted with parliamentary evidence. If the NPP truly “gave it to contract” before leaving power, why did its MPs vote against funding it?
The bottom line. The evidence suggests that the Accra-Kumasi expressway is an NDC initiative, conceived during the 2024 campaign, and actively opposed by the very NPP figures who now seek to claim credit. Butey’s performance on live radio name-dropping a minister who tried to kill the project, while failing to produce a contractor is less a revelation than a political own-goal. For a man who has maintained a reputation as a steady party hand, this misstep may be hard to walk back.
As one seasoned observer put it: “If you have to tell the host to call a former minister to confirm your story, you’ve already lost the argument.” The New Republic will continue to track the paper trail and await Asenso-Boakye’s response.