In August 2022, the National Executive Committee of the New Patriotic Party announced its slate of deputy national executives and directors — and among the names was one that came as no surprise to anyone who had followed grassroots politics in the north: Hajia Rabi Salifu, appointed Deputy National Communications Director of the party.
The appointment placed her in the party’s national communications directorate under Director of Communications Richard Ahiagbah, alongside fellow deputies Ernest Owusu Bempah, Kamal Deen Abdulai, Jennifer Ofori Appiah, George Krobea Asante and Dr. Asiedu Kokro — the team charged with carrying the governing party’s message through one of the most demanding news cycles in Ghana’s recent history.
A Promotion Earned The Hard Way
Her elevation was the culmination of years of unglamorous work far from the television studios. As Deputy Nasara Coordinator for the Northern Region, she spent years in the party’s outreach wing for Zongo and Muslim communities — organising, listening, and building trust in communities where her party historically had to fight for every vote. In 2020, she was drafted into the NPP’s Northern Regional Campaign Team, selected for the confidence and public-speaking gifts that would later make her a fixture on national television.
Those roots go back further still, to her student days: a TESCON treasurer while studying Social Change Communication at the University for Development Studies in Nyankpala — an academic path that reads, in hindsight, like preparation for precisely the role she now holds.
The Job Ahead
A deputy national communications director does not simply issue statements. The role demands daily presence on radio and television panels, rapid response to breaking stories, and the harder, quieter work of translating policy into language that makes sense at the market, the mosque and the trotro station. It is a job for a communicator who can hold her own under pressure — and in the years since her appointment, on programmes from Newsfile to Good Morning Ghana, Hajia Rabi has shown exactly why the party turned to her.
For the young women watching from the Zongos of the Northern Region, her journey — from student treasurer to the national directorate of one of Ghana’s two great parties — carries a message that needs no press release: the road from the grassroots to the national stage is real, and it is open.
Based on the NPP’s August 2022 appointment of deputy national executives and directors, as reported by MyJoyOnline and other Ghanaian media.
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