Dr. Tony Aidoo served as Senior Presidential Aide and Head of the Policy Evaluation and Oversight Unit of the Office of late President Atta Mills from 2009 to 2013, in addition to being a member of the Cabinet’s Economic Management Team for three years.
Dr. Aidoo held the post of Ambassador Designate, to which he was appointed by the then President of Ghana, John Mahama in November 2013.
He is also a member of the National Information Technology Authority, and of the African Union Advisory Board on Corruption.
Dr. Aidoo’s educational background is in International Affairs and Sociology.
He graduated from the University College of London with a Diploma in International Affairs in 1973, from the University of Buckinghamshire with a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Sociology in 1976, and from the University College of London with a M.Sc. in International Relations in 1977.
Dr. Aidoo earned his Ph.D. from the University of Surrey in 1983 and he also
completed a Post-Graduate Diploma in Law from the College of Law, London, in 2003.
He taught at the University of Cape Coast for sometime before switching to full time politics.
Dr. Aidoo was a member of Ghana’s Civil Service Council between 1992 and 2001.
At the same time, he also served as a member of Presidential and State Delegations to International Conferences and State Visits to the U.S.A., U.K., Japan, China, Germany, Malaysia, Brunei, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Dr. Aidoo has an extensive background in politics and was a member of the
Consultative Assembly for the Drafting of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of
Ghana.
Between 1992 and 2000, Dr. Aidoo was the Director of Research and Monitoring for the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
He also acted as Co-ordinator
of the Overseas Branches of the NDC.
He was a member of the National Executive
Committee of the NDC from 1992-2000 and from 2002-2005.
In addition to that, Dr.
Aidoo served as Deputy Minister to the Ministry of Defence from April 1999 to January 2001
Concerning his parents he had this to say:
“My Father was an absolute die-hard CPP. He was among the first to be sent Britain to pursue further education for the advancement of the country when Kwame Nkrumah became the Head of the Colonial Business. My father was the one tasked by Kwame Nkrumah set up the defunct State Footwear Corporation.
He started as the Manager, General Manager and Managing Director.
My Father and Mother were known activist of the CPP nation-wide including his entire family but I grew up not to like the CPP for the same reasons that you and most NDC persons are saying today.”
Recently Dr. Aidoo has fallen out with the NDC party.
He has disclosed why he stopped patronising congresses organised by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) detailing how the party has lost focus over the years.
According to him, his decision to ditch NDC congresses is because they never hold discussions on significant issues and policies that will improve the party but rather focus on trivial matters such as the nomination of party officials and flagbearers.
“Our congresses never extended to the discussions of policies and programmes.
It was only for elections; elections of party officials and flagbearer whose razzmatazz ends and we go. We never had time to discuss policies and programmes,” he said.
Speaking at the National Conference on Rethinking Political Leadership in Ghana in October 2018, Dr. Tony Aidoo said he finds it worrying how the NDC focuses mainly on elections indicating how the party has lost grip of its ideologies as a social democrat party.
Comparing the current state of the National Democratic Congress to that of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Tony Aidoo said he is not surprised the distinction between his party and the NPP has narrowed.
He stressed, “No wonder the ideological difference between the NDC and the NPP have narrowed to the extent that there is no distinction between the two and yet there should be distinction.
We are supposed to be social democrats for God sake and what do social democrats do?
They consider policies and programmes that inure to the benefit of the wider and larger majority of the population rather than contribute to what is happening.”
Dr. Tony Aidoo further expressed his disgust on how political parties in the country run the economy by thinking of their selfish interest leading to the generation of hooligans and vigilantes in the country.
According to him, “We have party conflict and the growth of vigilantism are the politicisation of crimes where hooligans and criminals vandalise state property and go and hide behind their political leadership and the police are afraid to throw the book at them.
We have the treatment of state property as party property by supporters of the incumbent regime…..In Ghana’s political party those with deep pockets form a cabal by which they dominate the party’s interest.
Elections have been a ritual for the circulation of the elites because that’s what it has been over the years.
You go to elections, one party wins overthrow the elites of the previous regime and bring in his elites every 8 years we go through that ritual”.
