When an incumbent President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama lost the 2016 Presidential Election, it took the Bole-Bamboi native from the West-Gonja Constituency, in the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region Region, some 8 more years to be returned to Jubilee House or the Presidency. So, when he also rather desperately asserts that he is intent on following in the footsteps of the serial and the veteran challenger who “decisively” defeated him in the December 2024 Presidential Election with approximately 2 million votes, former Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia is actually alluding to his long-shot hope of being reelected as the New Patriotic Party’s Nominee for the 2032 Presidential Election.
The foregoing message clearly implies that the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana does not expect to be named as the Presidential Nominee of the presently main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) for at least two more electoral seasons (See “I Can Come Back and Win the Presidency Like Mahama Did after 2016 Defeat – Bawumia” Modernghana.com 6/23/25). Which is why those of us who have already advised that the Oxbridge and the Simon Fraser University, Canada, educated crackerjack economist cool his heels for now until at least some 8 years from now, may have the gospel truth of the practical reality of history on our side.
Even so, those of us ardent and veteran observers and pundits of Ghana’s Fourth Republican Political Culture are not certain that such quite possible and even realistic self-assurance is any gauge of a guarantee of success in the near future for the rhetorically languid and soporific former Visiting Professor of the Rev. Mensa Otabil-owned Central University. It is absolutely no guarantee because thus far, Dr. Bawumia has yet to effectively demonstrate that he possesses at least a quarter of the fighting spirit that enabled the then former President John “Ford Expedition SE Payola” Dramani Mahama to re-clinch a presidential election victory, after having lost the 2016 Presidential Election with approximately 2-Million Votes to a twice-failed and twice-consecutively elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Right now, there is too much rancor and acrimony swirling around and among the vanguard operatives of the party to make the former Vice-President rest assured of not having to put up an epic battle for a second consecutive nomination as the 2028 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party. Alhaji Bawumia must be able to convincingly demonstrate to party delegates that venturing into the 2024 Presidential Election, for the most part, he did everything that he needed to have done smoothly and soundly. So far, it does not absolutely in any way appear that, in fact, he had.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the leadership of the party does not seem to appreciate the old and unimpeachably instructive observation or Empirical Law established by the immortalized Prof. Albert Einstein, that it inexcusably constitutes the very height of lunacy for anybody to expect different results, and positively so, when s/he continues to perform the same politically counterproductive routine over and over again ad-nauseam, as the leadership of the New Patriotic Party appears to have been doing for quite sometime now.
This is what I have recently characterized as an “Echo-Chamber Masturbation,” which is the state of affairs in which the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party continue to blindly and adamantly gauge the pulse of the party’s electoral fortunes, almost exclusively from the parochial and the hypermyopic perspective of party bosses and stalwarts, such as recently when the nation was rather morbidly informed that over 200 former Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executive Officers (MMDCEs) had endorsed the decision by the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the Elephant Party to re-gun for occupancy of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-constructed and the Indian Government-underwritten, Akan-Stool-Configured JUbilee House.
Now, what is at once breathtakingly peevish and utterly frustrating here is the fact that very few or absolutely none of the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party appears to have recognized the unignorably critical fact that absolutely none of these former Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives had been directly and democratically elected by the constituents over whose administrative affairs they had been sworn by oath. Which, of course simply means that the massive endorsement of the second consecutive run for the 2028 Presidential Nomination of the New Patriotic Party could not be accurately described or characterized as one that is reflective of the desires and the aspirations of the party’s nationwide membership at large, much less the desires and the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian electorate and the citizenry as a whole.
It is this selfsame blunder that led to the “tsunamistic” defeat of the erstwhile ruling New Patriotic Party in last year’s Presidential Election and, to be certain, the 2024 Parliamentary Election as well. Ditto the preceding with regard to the widely reported news about the fact of at least 60 New Patriotic Party-sponsored Members of Parliament, out of a total of 88, or so, having endorsed the decision by the former Vice-President to contest for the party’s nomination for the 2028 Presidential Election. So far, we have registered our firm belief that it is unarguably Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, the former Akufo-Addo-appointed Education Minister, who offers the New Patriotic Party the best chance of being returned to Jubilee House, come January 7, 2029.
Monsieur Byran Acheampong, the veteran US Army National Guard, and ny own Dear Brother and Friend Mr. Kwabena Agyei Agyepong may have a relatively more uphill task in clinching the party’s nomination for the 2028 Presidential Election. We shall be explaining our reasons for such prognoses in due course.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
