Election 2024: Mahama makes comeback

Spontaneous jubilation echoed across the country yesterday as Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia conceded defeat in the 2024 presidential election even before the Electoral Commission (EC) could declare a quarter of certified results.

The concession secured a landmark comeback of former President John Dramani Mahama to the presidency eight years after he left the seat of government after only a term in office.

It was the quickest concession in Ghana’s political history in 32 years and came about 15 hours after polls closed at 5 p.m. last Saturday as the country elected a new president and the ninth Parliament under the Fourth Republic.

The electoral results also delivered the first female Vice-President of Ghana, with Mr Mahama’s running mate, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, now set to be sworn in along with her boss on January 7, 2025.

Provisional results available to the Daily Graphic had put the National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate at more than 56 per cent of the votes in about 39,000 of the 40,648 polling stations across the country.

Unprecedented defeat

Dr Bawumia, who stood on the ticket of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), suffered an unprecedented defeat in the nation’s presidential poll with the biggest margin of loss in the presidential race in the Fourth Republic that also ushered Mr Mahama back to the seat of government.

Not only did the Vice-President fail in his bid to lead the NPP to a third consecutive term but he was also unable to spur his charges either to retain their parliamentary seats or win more slots as the party lost more parliamentary seats of a magnitude that no party has ever suffered in the Fourth Republic.

Although the Electoral Commission (EC) was yet to officially certify the full presidential and parliamentary results, the political parties knew their standing from the results they had collated, which from both sides, gave the NDC the convincing lead over the NPP in both elections, as provisional results trickled in.

Before Dr Bawumia’s concession, the NDC’s Director of Communications, Sammy Gyamfi, had addressed a news conference, indicating that results collated by the party’s mechanism showed the NDC was on the path to a resounding victory.

That projected victory included clean sweeps of the 11 parliamentary seats in the Upper West Region, all 15 seats in the Upper East Region, all 18 seats in the Volta Region, and all nine in the Oti Region; 31 of the 34 seats in the Greater Accra Region, seven of the 47 seats in the Ashanti Region and 18 of the 23 seats in the Central Region.

Results

At the early morning news conference, he said the party had secured 185 of the 276 parliamentary seats.

Two independent candidates had secured a seat each in the Central and Ashanti regions, leaving the NPP with 89 seats as its best possible shot in the legislature if they were to win all of the other seats.

For the NDC faithful, it had been a difficult journey of hope, ambition and resilience  following the rather humbling defeat in 2016 when the NPP swept the majority in Parliament on its way to a truly comfortable victory margin of more than 900,000 votes.

One supporter remarked afterwards: “This is for every Ghanaian. Take this as our second independence”.

“It was like a tsunami; they were taking us for fools. The Free SHS does not work; we pay more money than fee-paying SHS,” another said.

“What have they done; it’s a shame. We will vote against them today, tomorrow and anytime,” the supporter said.

Indeed, the celebrations were reminiscent of a liberation festival on the back of one of the fiercest electioneering exercises in Ghanaian contemporary history.

The NDC had bounced from the abysmal showing of 2016 to even the stakes in Parliament in 2020, pegging the NPP at 137 seats apiece, with an independent candidate completing the list of the eighth Parliament.

The party had also questioned the 2020 presidential results and contested the outcome at the Supreme Court but was unsuccessful as the apex court ruled that the party had no case.